Kathy wrote: > ... > I have a John Murray in Rioland, and a James Murray in Braegoch. > Now, I have tried to find these places on the internet and absolutely > nothing comes up. They may be misspelled because the writing back in > the 1700s was not real legible. I don't think they are "mis-spelled" - but the spelling of placenames does vary. As to not finding them, that will rather depend on where you look. When you are looking for a placename that has possibly disappered from the maps (if it was ever on one!) a general Google search may well not find it. For this purpose, you will be better served by using a dedicated resource, and the one I would recommend is the GENUKI Gazetteer. This is available from many pages in GENUKI, but if Banffshire is your target, then start with: www.abdn.net/genuki/BAN The Gazetteer link is immediately below the list of parishes. The Gazetteer data for Banffshire is currently undergoing a major update, as a joint project between Ray Hennessy and myself, but in the mean time, the data does include one instance of "Breagach" in the parish of Aberlour - I haven't yet found a match for "Rioland" We are still at the prototyping stage, but when the current project is complete, the Banffshire data will include (1) all placenames found on the current issue of the "Landranger" 1:25000 Ordnance Survey map, with a full map reference (2) all additional placenames found on the 1896 edition of the Ordnance Survey 1" map, with a full map reference (3) all additional placenames found in the Census Enumerations for 1841, 1851 and 1861, with a generic map reference to the Enumeration District. One other comment: neither Breagach/Braegoch nor Rioland (if we can find it) will turn out to be "towns". They will be individual farms. Gavin Bell