I have been sending these entertaining emails to a Scottish friend Bert MacKay -his following remarks are also interesting. Helen Tattie Scones were a favourite all over Scotland but I think they originated in Aberdeenshire, the county that grew the most potatoes in Scotland.(East Coast) Black Pudding and all sausage meats are about 1000 years old and my grandmother made many sausages with differing mixes stuffing them into sausage skins. These meats were common from the Ukraine and Scandinavia. Even HAGGIS that is honoured in all Robert Burns nights is not Scottish, when I was in Burns Birthplace in July of 2008 I tracked down that haggis was introduced to Scotland in the 13th Century but trading ships from Scandinavia brought different mixes ashore in Edinburgh with mostly dried meats. Scotland had lots of oats and sheep so that combination led to what is called haggis but the word is Scandinavian even if all my fellow Scots say it's not. In addition the word BANNOCK is Scottish and was introduced to natives in Canada in the 1700s by soldiers and explorers and traders from Hudson Bay. My grandmother from the Hebrides did not speak English until she was 12 years old...simply Gaelic and that was spoken in my Grandmother's house in my early years and I only have a few dozen words. Gaelic is now on the upsurge in both Scotland and Canada (Nova Scotia and Cape Breton) Here endeth the lesson. The best Scots food today sold in good restaurants is PRIME RIB called ROAST BEEF and all manner of FISH. Lobster and scampi and haddock, salmon and several types of fish are common in restaurants. Bert.

The thing that killed the cobbler's wife...the last...from me on tattie howking before we all end up skellie eyed! (Cross-eyed) As I replied to Kristy's enquiry: ...the Twentieth Century Chambers Dictionary, published in Edinburgh, has this very short definition: howk (thereby howker) means to dig, burrow; an earlier word was hoke, so maybe this is why Sam Heron explained that in the Wigtownshire dialect the word howker is pronounced as hoker. Howk has its roots in L.G. (Low German) holken Donald and Len's further "expositions" were interesting, too. I may have mentioned this before that friend Olive McDonald, such a knowledgable Wigtown lister, has a somewhat Irish inflection, but the relatives I spoke with in Auchencairn, Kirkcudbrightshire, though country folk, spoke with what I would consider to be a typical south of Scotland dialect and vocabulary I suppose tattie howking by schoolchildren from Glasgow was an emergency situation during the war. We gathered the potatoes alongside Italian prisoners of war and women farmhands...and could those women scoop up the totties/tatties! After the novelty wore off of trying to keep up with the potatoes being "howked" by the horse and harrower (or whatever it was called), it became very "old" as we could never quite keep on top of so many potatoes lying on the surface of the now flattened rill/drill no matter how quickly we tried to throw them into the wicker basket. Again, if it was raining and the mud was adhering to the potatoes, that was even harder work. Three weeks of that hard graft was enough for this city slicker! For lunch, we generally ate sandwiches with our backs to the field's wall...no way to wash our hands or take care of nature's needs, except to jump over the wall! On a couple of occasions we were given lunch in a farmhouse...and such memories of that spotless kitchen with its pipe-clayed floor, with the men at one table and us lassies at another! To this day I don't remember if we thanked the farmer's wife for that delicious soup. We had dinner back at our digs prepared by a local woman. I re-discovered her daughter many years afterwards and she filled me in some more on life at King's Grange. We were "billeted" in this large house, the King's Grange, a bus ride away from Castle Douglas. The last I heard a few years ago was that it was still in private hands and had not been converted into "flats" or a condo. My father's father was born in Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire as was his grandmother, but how they ended up in Auchencairn, Kirkcudbrightshire, I don't know. The patriarch of this lot, William Clint, born 1792, Carlingwark/Kelton, was an agricultural worker. He lived until he was 96 and if he did any tattie howking in his younger years it seems not to have hurt him. Most of my father's people from Wigtownshire/Kirkcudbrightshire were agricultural workers and dairymaids. Others were involved with horses, one driving a coach and four which seemed to somehow impress my Glasgow mother! He was also an accomplished artist, with one of his oil paintings presently hanging in Auchencairn House. We in Glasgow, believe it or not, were always impressed with the seemingly more independent and healthful way of life of my father's relatives in the south. Must have been so as they all lived well beyond the national average...though my Glasgow born and bred mother lived until she was 92! Maisie

Enough enough, never mind the tattie howkers, how about the tattie scones? (scon not scone) add a little extra salt and some plain flour (all purpose?) to the left over mashed tatties, roll out on a floured board, cut into a round and then 4 triangles, cook both sides on a hot girdle (not griddle) and serve with butter - fandabidozy. Diana ________________________________ From: leonard miller logan <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wed, December 15, 2010 3:25:45 AM Subject: [WIG LIST] Re Tattie Hokers Hi' Listers,                   on yer Sam, your desciption fits the Wigtownshire dialogue perfectly, 'a' hae niver heard onybody in Wigtownshire say ' Howking' when referring to somebody diggin' Tatties. The word hoke means to dig with fork or spade in the present tense,Hok'n or Hoked is the past tense, and these words were generally reserved for the groups of contractors who come over from Ireland to Harvest the Tatties. [ as apt'ly put by Sam Heron ) The whole business was a war time measure to overcome the shortage of labour. Schools in rural areas of Scotland, and some in the cities and larger towns were involved in this scheme, to help the farmers, to set the Tattie Harvest and and lift the Harvest when ready. I was one of them, an' a more back break'n' job you would be hard pressed to find. We referred to this occupation as Tattie settin' an' Tattie liftin'. We were paired up and set some twonty yairds to lift and sort, we gethered into a wicker basket, the big to medium size tatties went into one sack and the smaller ones into another, later they would be wal'd for seed etc. There was no payment of money, the farmer usually agreed to a denner or twa o' tatties, at the en' o' the day, an' maist folks carried a wee poke for such, the farmer didnae like you stealin' his tattie bags. Weel Listers, I hae had my tippence worth, an' nae doot there wul be ithers wantin' tae dae the same.                                             Happy Christmas to all.                                                                                       Len. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

As a boy in the 1940s and 1950s in Kirkcolm and Stranraer I can remember the Irish Tattie Hokers coming over and just sleeping rough as it were in sheds; even using the big potato sacks as "bed-linen". More to the point we didn't pronounce it "howker" we pronounced it "Hoker". I would also need to concede that almost everyone nowadays says howker but it was hoker to me and I get calls about it when I say 'hoker' on the radio in my Scottish Radio program. The Stranraer area people pronounced lots of words differently from the rest of Scotland other examples being haid for head and not heid; or fae for from and not frae.The Scottish dictionary also confirms that in Wigtownshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Ulster NI. it was hoke (Wgt., Kcb., Uls.); Our then accent was referred to as Galloway-Irish as against the Northern Irish Ulster-Scot and we spoke very much the same with a very distinct Irish component in our accent. As recently as last year in London I was asked if I was from Northern Ireland or Stranraer and that is after 53 years in Australia. >From the Scottish Dictionary: Tattie ho(w)ker, one who works at the potato-harvest, esp. a temporary worker from Ireland (Uls. 1953 Traynor, - hoker). Also HOWK, v., n.1 Also howck, hou(c)k; hoak, hoke (Wgt., Kcb., Uls.); hock, hok(k) (Sh.); ¶hauk (Ork. 1936 Ork. Agric. Jnl. XI. 15); ¶huck (Gsw. 1793 R. Gray Poems 40); holk. [Sc. huk; I.Sc. hk; Gall. hok] I. v. 1. To dig, delve the soil (Sc. 1710 T. Ruddiman Gl. to Douglas Aeneis), to make a trench or the like in the earth, to uproot or remove from the ground by digging. Ppl.adj. houket, disinterred, dug up Sam Heron

As usual, all of you there are being most generous about giving those of us here (in this place and/or in this time) an education about what the life of our ancestors was like. I'm really enjoying this series...and wondering if the reason my ggg-grandparents went to Scotland from Ireland. I have one more question to throw in...tell me about the word "howking" please. Can you give me an indication of how it pronounced? It appears to be a corruption of some word...but what one? And what does it mean? The closest I can come to a tattie howking story is this: When I was two, I managed to slip and fall down the last two steps of the stairway in the front hall. (I doubt that I ever went higher at that time since it would take only those two steps to get to the roomy and "safe" landing.) In the process I broke my arm. Mother settled me and went to find my father. She came back with the news that they would take me to the doctor...as soon as Dad had picked up all the potatoes he had already dug. It was a "very long" wait while I sat and felt sorry for myself and a bit peeved that my father thought the tatties were more important than I was. Eventually I got old enough to understand that letting those potatoes burn in the sun would not have been a good Scottish thing to do at all. Again, thank you all for the stories you tell. It helps me share the old country in a way that my grandfather couldn't do for me. He was only 2 when he left there, and my great-grandparents both died before I was born. Kristy in Illinois On 12/12/10 8:04 PM, "Maisie Egger" <[email protected]> wrote: > SNIPPET: Interesting note from another lister: "There were strong connections > between Sligo/ Mayo/ Leitrim /Donegal and Scotland largely because of > agriculture in the early 19th century....

I loved your description of tattie howking, Maisie. Fortunately, I didn't have to do it but, as a child, I do remember seeing the howkers in the fields. I now live in rural France where people are still very closely connected to the land and most people have a 'potager' where they grow their own veges. Some of these gardens can be as big as several hundred - even thousand - square metres and in the late summer whole families turn out to dig and collect potatoes. Admittedly, there are no horses to push the pace but you can often see several cars parked beside large fields and several generations of adults and children working alongside each other to fork and collect their 'potats'. At the end of the day, just as at the end of the grape harvest , they all sit at one large table have a meal together in the open or in a barn. Does anyone else remember collecting rosehips? As school children in the autumns of mid fifties we used to be paid to collect rosehips from the roadside. Someone from 'the authorities' would come on a specified morning to weigh and collect them. I think we were paid 2d a pound (about 1 'new' penny per half kilo). I believe is was for the vitamin C content to help boost our diets after the rationing during the war. Jose

The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) has just announced that digitised images of entries from the copy will books covering the period 1858-1900 are now available online, allowing users to view the full content of a will. 93,388 will images are now available to view. More information is available at www.proni.gov.uk/index/search_the_archives/will_calendars.htm

As I reflected on tattie howking during the war, it must have been around October when it wasn't as rainy as July, though the days would not have been quite so long! We must have been paid only 10/-d (ten shillings, which is about 86 cents American today!) a week as I now recall being handed 30/-d by one of the teachers at the end of the three weeks, which I would have promptly handed over to my mother. That wasn't much less than my first week's pay as an office girl, but it was much harder work. I then began to wonder did I REALLY walk to and from school in the dark? Yes I did, along with thousands of other schoolchildren in Glasgow, and NOBODY worried about us being kidnapped. Sometimes, if I was "speaking to" my girlfriend we'd walk to school together, but if we were on the "outs," I just went off to school by myself as a five-year-old in the early morning dark and afternoon dusk! As we would say in Scotland, to "mak siccar" that my imagination was not running away with me, I checked Google for the sun's dawn to dusk appearance and disappearance at this time of year. >From what I gather there's been some disagreement about making Double Summertime year-round in the U.K., but if there was Double Summertime when I was growing up, the sun must have been taking it's time to appear as we did walk to school when it was just getting light and then home again as it was beginning to get dark. Now remember I'm talking from the perspective of someone who is an octogenarian! Maisie (P.S. Angela, I don't know if your mother ever mentioned this, but as London was quite a bit south of Glasgow, perhaps it was light at both ends of the day.) Sunrise and sunset in Glasgow Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom Rising and setting times for the Sun Length of day Solar noon Date Sunrise Sunset This day Difference Time Altitude Distance (106 km) Dec 13, 2010 8:39 AM 3:43 PM 7h 03m 32s − 1m 12s 12:11 PM 11.1° 147.273 Dec 14, 2010 8:40 AM 3:43 PM 7h 02m 28s − 1m 04s 12:12 PM 11.0° 147.257 Dec 15, 2010 8:41 AM 3:43 PM 7h 01m 31s − 56s 12:12 PM 10.9° 147.241 Dec 16, 2010 8:42 AM 3:43 PM 7h 00m 42s − 48s 12:13 PM 10.9° 147.226 Dec 17, 2010 8:43 AM 3:43 PM 7h 00m 01s − 40s 12:13 PM 10.9° 147.212 Dec 18, 2010 8:44 AM 3:43 PM 6h 59m 28s − 32s 12:14 PM 10.8° 147.198 Dec 19, 2010 8:44 AM 3:44 PM 6h 59m 04s − 24s 12:14 PM 10.8° 147.186 All times are in local time for Glasgow

More on agricultural work in Ireland and Scotland, with permission. Maisie Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 2:25 PM Subject: Re: "Tattie Howking" - Ireland>Scotland, Potato Harvest SNIPPET: Interesting note from another lister: "There were strong connections between Sligo/ Mayo/ Leitrim /Donegal and Scotland largely because of agriculture in the early 19th century. Cattle boats sailed from Derry to Glasgow, convenient for all in the NW counties. Particularly important was "tattie howking."This was when squads of men and women came from Ireland to Scotland to assist in the potato harvest. They had the skills and generally received better payment because the industrial revolution hit Glasgow and central Scotland raising the standard of living above anything the tenant farmer could expect in North Leitrim. They organised it as follows: each big Scottish farmer would have an 'agent'- i.e., a local man in a village or town in Ireland who would be reponsible for getting together a 'squad' of locals, bringing them across to Scotland, getting them to the farm and generally keeping them in order. These squads generally slept in big communal barns, possibly travelled round three or four farms in a 2 or 3 month period and, being away from home and having a little money could become quite wild if not controlled. The agent had power over them because he could refuse to employ them the following year or could threaten to tell their families back home what they'd been up to! Most sent money home or saved their wages to see them through till the next year - some just had a wild old time! This system meant that people from the same villages tended to go to the same areas in Scotland- word of mouth being the major means of recruitment. It was a rough life and familiar faces must have helped. (Interestingly, Scottish schools, even in the cities, still get a week's holiday in October which English schools don't get. It's called a 'tattie howking' week, because formerly in the country areas, the authorities knew no children would be in school as they'd be required to help lift the tatties, or potatoes.) Gradually families would become familiar with the bit of Scotland they visited each year; working trips would lengthen and in the end some of the squad would not return at all. Some inter married with local Scots, but more started to get jobs in the industrial centres of Glasgow and Lanarkshire. Women found that going into service was easier than the life they had known back home - they would be paid for housework that was not as arduous as that they did for nothing in Leitrim just to keep the family and farm going. Men got jobs working on Glasgow trams as drivers or ticket men. As the industrial revolution turned Glasgow into a major city with shipbuilding and iron and Steel and coalmining there were more and more jobs. Many Irish worked on the Canal and railway building of the early 19th century - and following the canal or railway across Scotland brought them east to Edinburgh - which wasn't as industrialised as Glasgow but had a need for service industries. My own grandfather opened a grocery store which sold produce from the farm in Drumnafaughnan, sent across by boat via Belfast or Newry, with ingeniously designed crates that held eggs secure on the rail and boat journeys. Glasgow was an easy place to settle in for the emigrants because many Highlanders came down from the north of Scotland to the central belt to work and they had a similar background to the Irishmen - in agriculture and strong family life, and they Gaelic they spoke was close to the Irish spoken by the immigrants. So there it is - higher standard of living due to industrialisation, convenience of transport and a need for farm and, later, agricultural labourers. Hope that all makes some kind of sense!!! Sean McP." ---- Original Message ----- From: "Maisie Egger" <[email protected]> To: [email protected], [email protected], "IRELANDGENWEB" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 1:19:47 PM Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Fw: Farm Machinery/Uses -- Muckross Traditional Farms, Killarney, Co. Kerry - Trip to Ireland 2006 My 18th century forebears in the south of Scotland seem to have been mostly agricultural workers, and so I found this description of the lives of farm workers in Ireland enlightening as I am sure conditions were no different in Scotland. I spent only three weeks during the war---and it was enough---potato howking in Kirkcudbrightshire. Our school in Glasgow recruited us lassies for, I think, either 30/-d a week, or 30/-d for the three weeks! I can't remember now. It was very hard work, and when the rain turned the earth into clabber, it was much more difficult to pick the potatoes quickly enough out of the rills before the horse and digger came around again. It gave me great appreciation for the lot of farm workers, and maybe this is why I chose to work in an office. Maisie

My 18th century forebears in the south of Scotland seem to have been mostly agricultural workers, and so I found this description of the lives of farm workers in Ireland enlightening as I am sure conditions were no different in Scotland. I spent only three weeks during the war---and it was enough---potato howking in Kirkcudbrightshire. Our school in Glasgow recruited us lassies for, I think, either 30/-d a week, or 30/-d for the three weeks! I can't remember now. It was very hard work, and when the rain turned the earth into clabber, it was much more difficult to pick the potatoes quickly enough out of the rills before the horse and digger came around again. It gave me great appreciation for the lot of farm workers, and maybe this is why I chose to work in an office. Maisie ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 10:36 AM Subject: [Irish Genealogy] Farm Machinery/Uses -- Muckross Traditional Farms, Killarney, Co. Kerry - Triip to Ireland 2006 > SNIPPET: At Muckross Traditional Farms, Killarney, Co. Kerry, my sister > and > I found that to a great extent the lives of country people were ruled by > the > natural world around them. Each season brought its own set of activities > in > the house, in the farmyard and on the land. These activities were governed > by the weather and the requirements of the animals and the crops. In the > spring, for example, the two-horse plough was often used. While working, a > man and his horses might walk up to 8-9 miles a day at an average speed of > 2 > m.p.h. The harrow cultivated the soil in order to produce a suitable seed > bed for setting the crops. The corn drill seeds would pass down each tube > from the seed box to the coulters, which cut groves in the soil to receive > them. The turnip and mangel seeder machine was a precision seeder which > was > used to set turnips and mangels in rows or drills. In summer, the mowing > machine was pulled by two horses and used to cut the hay meadows, usually > in > May or June. It could also be used to cut corn. After mowing the hay left > lying in lines or swaths in the field; a day or two later, the hay was > turned over by the swath-turner in order to expose the undersides to the > sun > and wind. The hay rake collected or raked up the hay in order to make > wynds > in the field. The hay car was used to bring in the hay from the fields. > The wynds of hay were winched on board using ropes and a ratchet system. A > potato sprayer was used to spray the potatoes, on a dry windless day, with > a > mixture of bluestone and washing soda in order to prevent potato blight. > The process could be repeated several times throughout the growing season, > depending on weather conditions. Prior to the advent of the reaper-binder > a > gang of workmen, known in Irish as a meitheal, were required to cut the > corn > and bind it. The reaper-binder allowed the corn to be both cut and bound > quickly and efficiently. In autumn the potato digger was pulled by two > horses, the board-share of the digger ran beneath the potatoes which were > then lifted and spun free of the soil. The threshing machine threshed the > grain from the straw and winnowed away the chaff. The arrival of the > threshing machine in the farmyard, accompanied by many workers, was seen > as > an important social occasion in the farming calendar. A root cutter > (pulper) was used to chop-up root crops such as turnips or mangels, > allowing > easier consumption by the livestock. In the early 1900s milk separators > were a common items of dairy equipment. They were used to separate the > lightweight cream from the heavier skimmed milk. Cream was poured into a > butter churn which was then rotated using the side-handle. Visitors who > called to the house while butter was being made were expected to take a > turn > in churning. There were many piseogs (charms and spells) associated with > butter-making. It was widely believed that the butter could be stolen by a > local "hag" using magic, especially during the month of May. > > > Check out the Ireland GenWeb website at: http://www.irelandgenweb.com/ > > Great place to get help with your family research. > > Help wanted: County Coordinators > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Thanks, Diana. I see what you mean -- if you click on Wigtown on the home page map, you get no results. But I discovered that if you click on List of Parishes and Associated Recordings just below the map, you'll find several Wig parishes listed. I found recordings for Glasserton, Kirkinner, Kirkmaiden, Mochrum, Portpatrick, and Whithorn. Enjoy :-) Mary At 04:19 AM 12/9/2010, Diana Henry wrote: >Dear List, this url was published in todays Herald. Unfortunately >nothing from >Wigtownshire but many will find it worth looking at I am sure. >http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/

Hi Jim, I wrote earlier of not finding Lespraig or Lochspraig on old maps using the NLS site. With the guidance of Jenny & Paul, I revisited the NLS maps and found Lochspraig on the OS map surveyed 1849/50, published 1852 (6 inch Kirkcudbrightshire, sheet 21): http://maps.nls.uk/os/6inch/view/?sid=74427634 This is an excellent map. It is also marked as 'Lochpraik' on John Thomson's Atlas 1821 and Ainslie's maps of both 1821 and 1797. These maps have less detail and suffer scale and perspective inacuracies. Regards, Bruce On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 4:09 AM, Paul D. Chilvers-Grierson <[email protected]> wrote: > If you click the "Modern Map" tab on the Details popup at that website, > there is a red-orange dot which presumably is the site of the ruin, up the > hill from the burn. > > It is in the forest just northwest of Glentrool Village and northeast of > Marrbury Smokehouse on the A714 to Girvan, and is on a forest track. > > The burn appears to merge into another to become Fagan Burn, which then > flows into the Cree northwest of Bargrennan. > > Paul, in Wigtown > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "J Blain" <[email protected]> > To: "Jim Patterson" <[email protected]>; "Wigtownshire Roots Web list" > <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 4:56 PM > Subject: [WIG LIST] Lochspraig location Re: Lespraig-Minnigaff? > > > There is Lochspraig referred to on the website > http://www.kirkyards.co.uk/places.asp?ID=4 as a place in ruins, and > also Lochspraig burn. Clicking on 'details' gives the location as > latitude and longitude - 55.077481,-4.586343 and there's a map to > show where that is. The ruined place isn't named on the map but the > burn is. > > Jenny > (Who now has to go and play with that website some more!) > > > At 08:05 -0800 8/12/10, Jim Patterson wrote: >>Hello one and all of you fabulous folk on the Wigs list, Wow, my recent >>post >>certainly caught lots of attention by so many talented Genealogical >>researchers ever willing to help and guide listers like me. > >

thanks for this Diana- just found a reference for Cove, Gairloch, my husband's grandma comes from Cove- shall have a further look in the morning- Jan Royal Melbourne, Australia > Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 01:19:31 -0800 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: [WIG LIST] WEBSITE > > Dear List, this url was published in todays Herald. Unfortunately nothing from > Wigtownshire but many will find it worth looking at I am sure. > http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/ > > Diana Henry > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: williammcclurg Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.britisles.scotland.wig.general/322.408/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Thomas McKeand & Marion McClurg of Wigtonshire. Children: Patrick b. 1711, Agnes b.1713,Margaret b.1718, Barbara b. 1720. Anthony McBride & Elizabeth McClurg of Wigtonshire Children: John b. 1798, Agnes b.1799, Elizabeth b. 1802, Janet b. 1804. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.

This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: williammcclurg Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.britisles.scotland.wig.general/369.1.2.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: There has been a James McClurg living near Carlisle, PA in 1774. Could he be a son of James & Barbara (Vance) McClurg of Wigtonshire that came to America? [email protected] Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.

Dear List, this url was published in todays Herald.  Unfortunately nothing from Wigtownshire but many will find it worth looking at I am sure. http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/ Diana Henry

If you click the "Modern Map" tab on the Details popup at that website, there is a red-orange dot which presumably is the site of the ruin, up the hill from the burn. It is in the forest just northwest of Glentrool Village and northeast of Marrbury Smokehouse on the A714 to Girvan, and is on a forest track. The burn appears to merge into another to become Fagan Burn, which then flows into the Cree northwest of Bargrennan. Paul, in Wigtown ----- Original Message ----- From: "J Blain" <[email protected]> To: "Jim Patterson" <[email protected]>; "Wigtownshire Roots Web list" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 4:56 PM Subject: [WIG LIST] Lochspraig location Re: Lespraig-Minnigaff? There is Lochspraig referred to on the website http://www.kirkyards.co.uk/places.asp?ID=4 as a place in ruins, and also Lochspraig burn. Clicking on 'details' gives the location as latitude and longitude - 55.077481,-4.586343 and there's a map to show where that is. The ruined place isn't named on the map but the burn is. Jenny (Who now has to go and play with that website some more!) At 08:05 -0800 8/12/10, Jim Patterson wrote: >Hello one and all of you fabulous folk on the Wigs list, Wow, my recent >post >certainly caught lots of attention by so many talented Genealogical >researchers ever willing to help and guide listers like me. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

There is Lochspraig referred to on the website http://www.kirkyards.co.uk/places.asp?ID=4 as a place in ruins, and also Lochspraig burn. Clicking on 'details' gives the location as latitude and longitude - 55.077481,-4.586343 and there's a map to show where that is. The ruined place isn't named on the map but the burn is. Jenny (Who now has to go and play with that website some more!) At 08:05 -0800 8/12/10, Jim Patterson wrote: >Hello one and all of you fabulous folk on the Wigs list, Wow, my recent post >certainly caught lots of attention by so many talented Genealogical >researchers ever willing to help and guide listers like me.

Hello one and all of you fabulous folk on the Wigs list, Wow, my recent post certainly caught lots of attention by so many talented Genealogical researchers ever willing to help and guide listers like me. Thank you to all of you who helped in this post and all on the list who constantly amaze me with all the help you provide to so many of us from far and wide over the years. This truly is the best list on Roots!!! Meg Greenwood searched the Minnigaff film years surrounding the known baptism of my James McClure and found only one other Lespraig and this time it was quite clearly spelt so it must have been a house or small hamlet and perhaps close to Cardorcan which was where James sister Helen was born the next year. Cardorcan is on the Minnigaff map kindly provided by Diana Henry but Lespraig was not so for now will remain a mystery J Merry Christmas to one and all Jim, Ann and Jonathan Patterson Brentwood Bay, BC, Canada

Hello listers, Would either of you have information about a George McCracken, born circa 1825 who may have been a son, or grandson of John McCracken, merchant in Glenluce in 1817? John McCracken was mentioned in a family letter dated 1817. I think he may have had a connection to Dalrymples in New Luce. Possibly one of the McCracken women married a Dalrymple man or vise versa, but I haven't found this situation in our family tree, yet. Any information would be appreciated. Many thanks, as usual. Regards, Carolyn -- Carolyn Achata