James, I had never heard of the McWatters surname in Caithness before, so I had a look on the IGI Website http://www.familysearch.org. If you haven't come across it before, this is a website run by the Mormon Church and is free for anyone to use, it's a useful initial source, but be careful as I have found a number of inconsistencies over the years. The IGI is a useful starting point as it's free. In Scotland all Birth, Marriage and Death records before 1855 were held by the local parish church and are known as OPRs (Old Parish Records). After 1855 the records were held by the state and are known as SIs (Statutory Indices). The IGI has taken all the old OPR microfilms and entered them in their database, but they don't have access to the SIs. Consequently the IGI is quite good as an initial source for records before 1855. I searched the IGI for McWatters and it comes up with 27 Birth/Christening records ranging from 1821 to 1874, all in the county of Ayrshire, south west of Glasgow. If you want to confirm information found on the IGI you can use the official records site called Scotland's People http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. However, this sites charges for its services. This site has indices for all Scottish records and has many of the original documents available for download. They are gradually scanning all the documents, so eventually all records will be available. Happy hunting. Regards, Chris Macneill -----Original Message----- From: James Ludwigsen [mailto:jammer@kiski.net] Sent: 31 May 2003 13:18 To: SCT-CAITHNESS-L@rootsweb.com Subject: McWatters families Hi From Usa. I am looking for the McWatters families in Caithness. I have seen the families in the book called The Surnames of Scotland by George F. Black. Can any body help me find the McWatters.I have found them in Monteal, Canada, in the early 1800's. I thought they might have can there from Scotland. My grand mother is an McWatters.Or as her names is MacWatters but they early family spells it as McWatters. Thanks Best Regards Jim Ludwigsen --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.483 / Virus Database: 279 - Release Date: 19/05/2003