Find your ancestors in Scotland, People of Nairnshire

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Each record includes a transcript of the original record. The amount of information will vary but you may be able to find a combination of the following:

• Name
• Year
• Place
• Publication title
• Additional information

Transcripts were created by Bruce Bishop FSA Scot

Taken from several sources, this collection of records covers the Scottish county of Nairnshire. The county is comprised of the parishes of Nairn, Auldearn, Ardclach, Cawdor and Croy & Dalcross. Croy & Dalcross is partly in Nairnshire and partly in Inverness-shire but for the purposes of this collection it has been included under Nairnshire

Nairnshire is a small county in the north-east of Scotland, about 22 miles in length and 15 miles in breadth, and comprising an area of 200 square miles. The county consists of a flattish coastal region which is home to the majority of the population. The sparsely populated hilly interior, rises to meet the foothills of the Grampian Mountains in the south. The coast forms an arc shape, with the Whiteness Head peninsula in the west and The Bar peninsula in the east. The main rivers are the River Nairn and the Findhorn, and the chief bodies of water are Loch Loy, Cran Loch, Clunas Reservoir, Loch of Boath and Loch Kirkcaldy.

Discover more about these records

All personal and place names have been reproduced exactly as in the original documents, which gives the reader a good idea of the numerous variations in the spelling of these names. It has to be remembered that for most of the period of this study (ie up to 1850) the spoken language of some of the parishes was Gaelic. This must be considered carefully when researching families. It is very noticeable that some place-names have multiple spelling variations, and that the early maps are sparsely detailed making it difficult to precisely locate individual locations. There seem to be many local variations of some surnames, such as McGillivray, and these have all been recorded as transcribed from the documentation.