Hi Cheryl, Further to Crawford's advice, there has been lots of messages posted to the list about Sir James HAY, aka Sir James DALRYMPLE HAY. you can search the archives at: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/search?path=SCT-WIGTOWNSHIRE Regards, Bruce

I found this on the Victoria (University of Wellington New Zealand ) website http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-ArnSett-c5.html which I thought may interest someone. I was actually googling for the bootmakers in wigtownshire website- can someone tell me the URL please? Donna Aitken "Title: Settler Kaponga 1881-1914 - A Frontier Fragment of the Western World Author: Rollo D. Arnold ,Victoria University Press, 1997, Wellington Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection Keywords: New Zealand History "We turn now to the Loan and Mercantile's Mangatoki venture. The factory's jubilee booklet gives the credit for initiating the venture to John Stevenson, the L & M's Wanganui manager, and Mahoe farmer David A.L. Astbury.* Astbury had seen press reports that Stevenson's firm was prepared to erect or finance factories and wrote to him suggesting that Mangatoki might be a suitable area. Eltham storekeeper C.A. Wilkinson had built the Mangatoki factory in 1891. 'Marksman' of the Yeoman (7/3/91) described it as 'one of the most complete establishments of the kind I have yet seen' but unfortunately Wilkinson's backers did not fulfil their guarantees, forcing him to close down. The factory passed into the hands of Chew Chong, who sold to the L & M. The Farmer of July 1896 described the new venture's beginnings under manager Andrew McWilliam: The Mangatoki Factory, then an almost disused building, with a history of vicissitudes, was purchased by the Company, together with about eight acres of land and the river rights attached to it, and the newly-appointed dairy manager received instructions to get everything in readiness for manufacture, and to erect at the same time two tributary creameries on sites already selected. This gentleman, who we may mention is by birth a Creole of St Croix, and by upbringing and education a Scot of Galloway, brought with him to his task theories and experience gained in one of the most successful dairy undertakings in Scotland, viz., that of the Wigtownshire Creamery Company. His ideas were strictly utilitarian, and left no room for fads. He holds that half the success of manufacture lies in cleanliness, not as the term is frequently understood, but as near an approximation as possible to such an ideal as the cleanliness of snow. Hence it is that in the alteration of the factory, which took place in the winter of 1894, and in the erection of the tributary creameries now numbering five, the architect . was required by Mr McWilliam to carry out everything in such a way as to be readily accessible to scrubbing brush and broom, which are ever at work, thus ensuring everywhere the pure sweet atmosphere on which a high value is set. On the wet winter afternoon of Friday, 30 June 1893, about 150 Kaponga farmers came over muddy roads to the meeting advertised for 4pm to consider the L & M's proposal of a dairy factory at Kaponga. Storekeeper Frank Canning was elected to the chair and the L & M's John Stevenson further explained the nature of the offer. After various questions were satisfactorily answered the meeting gave enthusiastic and unanimous support to David Astbury's motion of acceptance. A schedule of cows promised was then taken, showing 550 for Kaponga, 50 more than at Mangatoki. There was an abrupt change of mood after the L & M's announcement late next evening of a change in its plans. Apparently it had envisaged three factories, at Mangatoki, Kaponga and Punehu (Te Kiri), each with associated creameries. On further thought it had decided that two factories would be more economic, with Kaponga becoming a creamery attached to the Mangatoki factory."