My Notes

The following notes are the important little bits which need to be published somewhere about items on this site. To make life easier I have put them altogether under the title notes. These notes relate to most everything on my blogs and sites including photographic so please spare a few minutes to read them.

NAMES: The biggest stumbling block finding ancestors in Sutherland has always been their names! So many Mackay, Mackenzie, Murray, etc and some used Mc and some used Mac! Often the same person changed it daily! To make things even more difficult they seem to have all been named Alexander or Jessie!
Over the years I have created many lists and indexes of these folks and in order to make them searchable I have used the following system:
All Mc and Mac names are shown throughout my work as Mac
I use the standard form of names - for example Macintosh or Mackintosh are all shown as Macintosh
Female Christian names are shown in their standard form i.e. Janet for all Jessie; Jane for Jean etc.
Using this simple system creates meaningful, easy to use, indexes and lists which I hope you will find useful in your searching. 

PLACES: If while searching through parish lists you do not find who you are looking for, either here or when in record repositories, it is always worthwhile looking at neighbouring parishes. For example Aberscross is generally thought to be in Golspie parish and yet some early lists include men from Aberscross in Rogart parish.

Some places also appear to move! Example Rhemusaig and Kinnauld are geographically in Rogart and in 1745 were recorded there - sometime after this date it became part of Dornoch parish before reverting back to Rogart in the late 1800s. There are numerous similar examples throughout the parishes - always worth a look next door!

PARISH PLACE NAMES: My sources: Population Lists of Assynt 1638 – 1811, Malcolm Bangor-Jones; The Assynt Clearances, Malcolm Bangor-Jones; Ordnance Survey maps in Landranger series; Bartholomew’s map 1945, Sutherland, sheet 59; Book of Mackay, Bighouse Papers, pages 480-482; Geo. Sutherland of Riarchar, Elizabeth R Mackay; Day Book of William Macdonald, Lairg; Tongue & Farr, Jim A Johnston; Wrath & Reay, Geoff Holmes; Durness 1809 Militia lists (NAS); 1881 census records; Burial Grounds of Sutherland; Population Lists of Strathnaver, Strathy and Strath Halladale 1667-1811, Malcolm Bangor-Jones

PHOTOGRAPHS: Unless otherwise stated all photographs shown throughout my blogs etc. were taken by and remain the property of Christine Stokes.  If you wish to use anything from these pages including photographs on line please ask me via email or via Facebook message. Where I have used other people's work I have tried always to give credit to them.