Place:Mochrum, Wigtownshire, Scotland

Mochrum (#8 on map) is a parish on the eastern shore of the Luce Bay and was located in the former county of Wigtownshire. Both county and parish ceased to exist following the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1974. The parish had an area of 100.2km2 (38.6 sq. miles) and had 4 neighbouring parishes: Glasserton, Kirkcowan, Kirkinner and Old Luce. The parish included the following settlements: Alticry, Elrig, High Glenling, Mochrum Village, Myrton and Port William. Settlements listed in italics have been redirected here. Mochrum is now located in the Dumfries and Galloway Council Area, some 11 miles (17 km) southwest of Newton Stewart. [edit] Port William the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia Port William is a fishing village in the parish of Mochrum with a population of approximately 460. It is situated between the small villages of Elrig and Mochrum to the north and Monreith to the south. It is located 23 miles east of the town of Stranraer, on the coast of Luce Bay. It looks towards the Mull of Galloway (the most southerly point of the Scottish mainland). The Isle of Man is usually clearly visible, lying only 20 miles to the south across the Irish Sea.

The original settlement was known as Killantrae, and was probably founded not long after St Ninian arrival in nearby Whithorn towards the end of the 4th century. Killantrae was swept away following the intervention of developer and landlord Sir William Maxwell, 5th Baronet, of Monreith House (east of the village). In the 1770s he built an entirely new village, complete with a good harbour and renamed it Port William. One of the earliest buildings still standing was the corn mill, located on the side of the Killantrae burn to take advantage of the power provided by its water. Port William is an example of a planned village; the harbour, built for the convenience of his tenant farmers, was one of the first in western Galloway.

In the 17th and 18th centuries Port William was known as much for the illicit activities of its smugglers as for the legitimate trade of its port.

Research Tips

• Scotlands People, the website of the Scottish Register Office provides

• official civil (from 1855) and parish registers (from when first produced) for births, marriages and deaths for all of Scotland
• original census images for all years available (1841-1911).
• collections of wills and testaments and
• property tax listings
• an extensive collection of local maps
• kirk session records for individual parishes (added in 2021 and not yet complete).

This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries, collections of wills, and census listings (the 1881 census is free to view, also on Ancestry and FindMyPast). The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer. Viewing the kirk session records is free, but a charge will be made for a copy.

• The National Library of Scotland have an online map collection of historic and modern day maps which can zoom in on a specific farmhouse or street in a town. Their collection also includes London and some counties of southeast England.
• Gazetteer for Scotland contains an article for each parish from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland by F. H. Groome, (published 1882-4) and short details about each parish today including names of small settlements within a parish.
• The FamilySearch Wiki explains a great many legal terms only found in Scotland and provides a gazetteer for genealogists for each parish across the county. It reviews the availablility of parish registers.
• GENUKI Scotland which provides for each Scottish parish (indexed by county), amongst other data, complete quotations from A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1851) by Samuel Lewis, John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), and possibly other gazetteers from individual counties and regions. It is worth reviewing one of its county pages to see what is available online or in print from local archive providers. Each county page has a "Where in ---shire is .... ? section--very helpful in pinpointing the small places below parish level.
• A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
• The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online provides access to digitised and fully searchable versions of both the Old Statistical Account (1791-99) and the New Statistical Account (1834-45). These uniquely rich and detailed parish reports, usually written by local Church of Scotland ministers, detail social conditions in Scotland and are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Scottish history.

Notes for Wigtownshire

• The Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society website may point to material of interest to the general researcher. Amongst their publications are indexes for the 1841 census. These are prepared as small booklets, one for each parish, and are alphabetically indexed transcriptions. Obtainable from the D & G FHS, address at website.
• The FreeCen Project has a searchable (not browsable) transcription of the whole of Wigtownshire online for the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses, with the 1871 census partly completed.
• The Wigtownshire Pages is an accumulation of links to various websites with genealogical information about Wigtownshire, including Births, Marriages and Deaths from the Wigtown Free Press, an index of a list of people living in Wigtownshire in 1684, and a small website of monumental inscriptions.
• Wigtownshire Links is a similar webpage to the one above which may include other websites.