When did Reay become part of Caithness?

[Angela]

I wonder if anyone could tell me when the district of Reay was "moved" from being part of Sutherland to part of Caithness? :confused

My 2 x gt grandmother, Janet Munro (m.s. McDonald) was born in Reay in 1809, and in the 1841 census at Bower, was described as "foreign born".

Looks like the enumerator ticked the wrong column, and should have chosen "outside the county". (My 2 x gt grandfather Angus Munro, born in Kildonan, was described in the same way.)

The next mention of Reay in my family's documents is the birth of my aunt at Lybster, Reay, Caithness in 1906....(that's when I became aware of a second Lybster...but that's another story...)

I'm assuming Reay was "moved" sometime between 1841 and 1906? :confused

[botheed]

I wonder if anyone could tell me when the district of Reay was "moved" from being part of Sutherland to part of Caithness? :confused

My 2 x gt grandmother, Janet Munro (m.s. McDonald) was born in Reay in 1809, and in the 1841 census at Bower, was described as "foreign born".

Looks like the enumerator ticked the wrong column, and should have chosen "outside the county". (My 2 x gt grandfather Angus Munro, born in Kildonan, was described in the same way.)

The next mention of Reay in my family's documents is the birth of my aunt at Lybster, Reay, Caithness in 1906....(that's when I became aware of a second Lybster...but that's another story...)

I'm assuming Reay was "moved" sometime between 1841 and 1906? :confusedtry wikipedia on the internet it should give u all u r looking for

[fred]

I wonder if anyone could tell me when the district of Reay was "moved" from being part of Sutherland to part of Caithness? :confused

My 2 x gt grandmother, Janet Munro (m.s. McDonald) was born in Reay in 1809, and in the 1841 census at Bower, was described as "foreign born".

Looks like the enumerator ticked the wrong column, and should have chosen "outside the county". (My 2 x gt grandfather Angus Munro, born in Kildonan, was described in the same way.)

The next mention of Reay in my family's documents is the birth of my aunt at Lybster, Reay, Caithness in 1906....(that's when I became aware of a second Lybster...but that's another story...)

I'm assuming Reay was "moved" sometime between 1841 and 1906? :confused

All my old maps show Reay in Caithness.

[Angela]

All my old maps show Reay in Caithness.

Thanks for that fred, I'll look into this a bit further....

If the info in this 1841 census was the only suggestion that Reay wasn't in Caithness at that time, I'd assume the enumerator had made a different mistake in this case -i.e. he shouldn't have ticked either the foreign or outside the county columns...but I think there are some more examples among my relations.

I'll check over the documents I have...I've been searching for more about my 3 x gt grandfather, Hugh McDonald, in Sutherland records, with no success so far. Perhaps I should be looking in Caithness records instead. :confused

I'd put the family history on the back burner over the summer, and am just getting going on it again now.:)

[Angela]

Many thanks to helenwyler for taking the trouble to send me this very helpful link.

http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/towns/townhistory1885.html

I hadn't even known the Gazeteer was online - I'm sure it will prove very useful in the future.

Thanks a lot, Helen! :D

[Rosemary Skea]

When I was transcribing OPR for Reay Parish in Caithness, I came across "The census for that part of the parish of Reay situated in Sutherlandshire" dated 1811. There were 179 households with 861 persons listed covering an area from Portskerray to Bighouse.

If anyone is interested in this data, it is in Excel spreadsheet form.

Rosemary