While not pretending to know anything about this, masons were surely craftsmen who had to learn their trade through an apprenticeship (7 years?) under a master mason. Their skills would be essential to erecting public buildings, churches, houses, mills and so on, not just gravestones, the work of monumental masons. A qualified mason would be admitted to membership of a craft guild - the modern concept of trade unions came later in the nineteenth century. If a mason was time-served and admitted to a guild, records of accreditation may survive. Maybe someone else can explain the role of freemasonry. Iain ----- Original Message ----- From: "jody allen" <fraochale@gmail.com> To: "D&G Mailing List" <DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 4:38 AM Subject: [DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY] Stone masons > > Can anyone share with me what a stone mason's day might be like in the > early > 1800's in Galloway? My 3xgrandfather was a stone mason and I would like to > know what he did. Were there any large construction going on in the > 1820-1840's in Kirkcudbright, Drumfries or Wigtown that would need a lot > of > stone masons? I am hoping to find some records of the work he did but need > to know other than doing headstones what a stone mason might have done. > Also interested what a joiner would do? Were they basically independent > and > were hired for jobs or did they work for a "union" and were called to work > on jobs. I am just looking for sources of information in other sources > rather than the Vital Statistics and kirk session records. > > Jody > > -- > Jody Allen, > Scottish Scribbles Blog > http://scottishscribbles.blogspot.com > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Researching: > Scotland: Wallace, Mctaggart, Clarke, Mckean(d), McCartney, Stewart > Ireland: Lynch, Drought > Wales: Williams, Walsh > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > DUMFRIES-GALLOWAY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >