Hi Mary and Jim, I'm just back from 3 days of bush-walking in the mountains and picked up on this thread, including your off-list message with the scanned image attached. Sorry to belie your faith in me Mary, but I can't work this one out. I would like to see pages from either side of that one, as I'm in doubt about a couple of the letters as written by this session clerk. I don't feel there is any doubt about the 'espraig' section, and the 'L' appears likely, even though this 'L' is not quite the same as the one in Logie. Mary's assertion re 'In' looks reasonable at first glance. The use of 'In' is also consistent with the format of other entries, indicating the couple were tenants in the named property, however, I have two difficulties with this. Firstly, why has the session clerk used capital 'L' here, whereas he used lower case 'i' in other such places? Secondly, this 'I',if that is what it is, has been formed differently to his others, as in Isobel and Isaac. (Note how similar he writes I and J.) I pondered if it was another 'L', and that this word was 'Low'. Low is a commonly used prefix to denote which of 2 sections of a farm is being described. The problem is that this mystery letter is not a convincing 'L' either. The pen loops seem more consistent with a 'G', but it also looks different to the 'G' in George. We don't have a 'Y' to compare it with. Its hard to imagine what word may fit with either of these. I wondered Bill Copland's suggestion of an alternate spelling of Lochspring is the answer, so looked at some old maps. There is a place called Lochspraig, but it is in the neighboring parish of Kells. I didn't find the location of Lochspring, but it obviously must have existed somewhere in the parish of Minnigaff. The best candidate I found, (on the 1745 Herman Moll map), was Torfessaig. This appears on more recent maps as Tarfessock. It is north of Loch Trool, near the Minnoch River. I'm not convinced this is the place either, but though it best to through it into the mix. There is some smudging of the writing which makes it more difficult to decipher the initial letters of this location, but there are some clear pen strokes. Unfortunately, these seem to assist an argument against any of the proposed letters, rather than for any of them. This brings me back to wanting to see more of the had of this session clerk, especially if he has recorded other events at this location - which often proves to be the case. One really needs access to the LDS film of the register to do justice to this approach. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the Minnigaff OPR film. (I have access to all of the Wigtownshire parishes.) Perhaps we are looking at 'In Lespraig', and Lespraig is an alternate spelling for Lochspraig, and also Lochsring. One possibility we should not rule out is that it was an alternate spelling of Lochspraig in the parish of Kells. There are occasional examples of births in other parishes being recorded in some baptism registers. I don't know if this was ever the case for Minnigaff. At this stage, we need to keep an open mind. Maybe some other evidence will arise to help in assigning this place name. Regards, Bruce -------------------------------- Mary Richardson to me, Jim Having analyzed the other records on the page, I conclude that the second line of the record you're interested in begins "In" -- even though it doesn't look much like it. Which means the next word -- the one you're pondering over -- is a place name. Since this page is categorized as a Minnigaff record, I rule out Whithorn. Furthermore, I rule out Penninghame (even though it's just across the river from Minnigaff.) The third letter is clearly an old-fashioned 's', and the word end in "raig." Observing the p in "baptized," I conclude that the place ends in spraig. The "e" before this seems clear, so we have "espraig." Which gets us to the first letter. Seems to be L or S, but there's no Lespraig or Sespraig that I can find. I tried other letters before "espraig," but I came up empty. Am turning this over to Bruce as he's read far more old records than I have. Mary