Are you interested in family, local or Scottish history? The Library has recently digitised a selection of almost 400 printed items relating to the histories of Scottish families, and you can read them all on our website in the Digital Gallery (Click here). All areas of Scotland are included, from Dumfries to Shetland, and many different families and places are represented – in fact many more than the titles might suggest, as a keyword search by place or name will reveal.
Newark Castle
I visited Newark Castle at Port Glasgow recently, so I searched the digital resource and found this excellent image in Memoirs of the Maxwells of Pollok, Volume 1 – Memoirs & charters. Click Here
It was built and owned by the Maxwell family, who are most usually associated with Pollok House in Glasgow. Now owned by Historic Scotland and open to the public, it is a fascinating building, wonderfully situated on the banks of the Clyde at Port Glasgow, and is a remarkable 15th century survival amidst the shipyards. It was upgraded into a fine mansion by Sir Patrick Maxwell in the 1590’s, and in one of the bedrooms we can still see the original pinewood panelling and cupboards, which would have included a fold-down bed – handy to have for visitors even then! Well worth a visit.
The Family of Gordon in Griamachary, in the parish of Kildonan, compiled by John Malcolm Bulloch in 1907. Click Here
This book outlines the lives and military achievements of Tacksman Adam Gordon’s family and descendants. This family tree reveals four generations of military service in one family, probably not unusual, but remarkable nonetheless.
Summer at the Lake of Monteith, written by P H Dun, the Station Master there in 1866. Click here
There are wonderful stories to find too, such as this account which proves that ‘doing the Highlands’ is nothing new! Mr Dun is quoting from the Glasgow Herald, July 1865.
DOING ABERFOYLE—BY A GLASGOW TOURIST.
Looking out for a new route is the “ look out” of every tourist who has been regularly “doing” the Highlands, season after season, as the writer has done for some years; and as each successive summer rolls past, the difficulty becomes more and more great of finding some new and interesting district of country, alike interesting to the invalid, the tourist, the geologist, and antiquarian. Permit me, then Mr. Editor, to inform my brother tourists that such a route has, by the kind liberality of one of the most liberal hotel proprietors in Scotland, just been opened to the public, and almost by mere accident. I, one day at the end of last week, had the unbounded pleasure of being driven through it at “Jehu” speed. Having seen, in one of the Forth & Clyde Railway time-tables, that I could leave the City at 9.35 a.m., reach Port of Monteith station at 11.20, and “do” the Lake of Monteith, Aberfoyle, Loch-Ard, Loch-Chon, Inversnaid, and Loch-Lomond, returning to Glasgow at 8 p.m., and all for “sixteen bob”, it struck me as something “decidedly new”. Determined to make a trial of the new route, on the morning of Saturday last I found myself at Port of Monteith station, exactly at 11.20………..Find out how he gets on by clicking here and reading pages 120 – 125
Quite a trip to have made in one day, and all by public transport! The station opened in 1856 as Cardross Station, and was renamed as Port of Monteith Station in 1858, finally closing to regular traffic in 1934.
Find these and much more in our ‘Histories of Scottish families’ digital resource by clicking here. All titles are also available to read in the Library.