What attracts Genealogists to Gatehouse of Fleet?

The centre of Gatehouse has hardly changed over the last two hundred years. The houses your ancestors lived in are probably still there.If your ancestors came from a Galloway farm, the farm names have been unchanged for 400 years or more.Most people from Gatehouse were buried in one of our five local cemetries:

1. Girthon Old Kirk cemetery
2. Girthon Parish cemetery
3. Anwoth Old Kirk cemetery
4. Anwoth New Kirk cemetery
5. Kirkdale Old Kirk cemetery

The genealogical information centres in Dumfries are:

1. The Ewart Library, holding numerous books including Russell’s “Gatehouse and District”, census returns, valuation rolls, newspaper indexes, and the Mormon International Genealogical Index on microfiche for Dumfries and Galloway. The library has an extensive card index system, and the more modern computer access to information.

2. The Dumfries and Galloway Archives hold a wide range of the less common records, such as shipping records, some old wills and testaments, farm records, estate correspondence, etc.

3. The Family History Centre in Dumfries again has many of the more common records.
www.dgfhs.org.uk

Come and see where your ancestors lived, worked and were buried.

Fine genealogical references in the centre's at Dumfries.

For more serious research, the National Records Office in Edinburgh holds copies of most wills, testaments and entails over 100 years old, services of heirs, sasines, and many estate records including estate maps.

Next door, the Register Office holds every register of births, baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials in Scotland, both in original form and on microfilm, and has its own computer access system. It also holds all the census returns, again accessible through its computer system.

The National Library’s Map Room is an invaluable centre for finding the location of place names long since gone from modern maps: the National Library itself has a computer access to all known books, some of which may be about your ancestors. Will and testaments less than 100 years old are often held by the Commissary Office, over the new Law Courts in Edinburgh, and are open to the public after confirmation has been given.

A less common source of information is the House of Lords Record Office, keeping records of anything raised in both Houses of Parliament.

Useful Links

FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service - www.familysearch.org

General Register Office of Scotland
www.gro-scotland.gov.uk

Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society
www.dgfhs.org.uk

National Library of Scotland
www.nls.uk