Place:Whithorn, Wigtownshire, Scotland

Whithorn (#16 on map) was a parish located in the former county of Wigtownshire. The parish is located at the end of the peninsula called The Machars stretching south between the Bay of Luce and Wigtown Bay. Both county and parish ceased to exist following the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1974. The parish had an area of 47.7km2 (18.4 sq. miles). and had 2 neighbouring parishes: Glasserton and Sorbie. The parish included the villages of Whithorn and Isle of Whithorn (3 miles apart) and the smaller settlements of Bishopton, Portyerrock, and Prestrie. Whithorn is now located in the Dumfries and Galloway Council Area, some 16 miles (25 km) south of Newton Stewart. the text in this section is based on a section of an article in Wikipedia Since the demise of parishes, Whithorn can also be described as an area of 10,000 acres in Wigtownshire, 11 miles south from Wigtown, about 8 miles in length, and varying from 2 to 5 miles in breadth, anciently divided into baronies, each controlled by a baron of the court of the barony, for example, Houston, Baron of the Barony of Busbie or Busby. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Whithorn.

Isle of Whithorn

Isle of Whithorn is a seaport village, said to be the most southerly village in Scotland. It stands on what was once a rocky islet, but is now attached to the mainland of Whithorn parish. It lies the coast northeast of Burrow Head, about 3 miles from Whithorn and about 13 miles south of Wigtown. The two villages are often incorrectly amalgamated or confused. It is referred to locally as 'The Isle' - never 'the Isle of Whithorn'.

The village is the location of the long ruined 13th-century Saint Ninian's Chapel, previously a chapel linked to Whithorn Priory and a stopping off point for pilgrims landing on Isle Head and making their way to Whithorn. Although no longer a true island, John Ainslie's maps as late as 1782 and 1821 show the Isle as an island. The main street was originally a causeway, with the harbour located on what was then the true Isle. The 16th Century Isle of Whithorn Castle lies within the village.

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.