Hi Audrey
I think I would probably give up looking for Mary Douglas in Scotland, but I did have to search for one family & all I knew was Fife, Scotland. I trolled through hundreds and started grouping them in families and mainly tracked them down through the naming standards used (which were in evidence until about 1870 in my family). So e.g. If I had Mary Douglas - I would look for a father with the same name as her 2nd son and mother with the same name as her 1st daughter. If Mary had many children, some were also likely to be named after siblings. So If I had prospective parents, I then looked for all the children born to this family. I did find that from early 1700s until about 1830 most of the families stayed in the one parish. When they began to move around, things got trickier.
I also trolled the net looking for anyone searching the same names, and after I thought I had found my folks, I found a distant relative who had reached the same conclusion.
I have had one family where I was convinced I had the right folks & the discovery of a relative with the family bible showed that I was completely wrong - so it doesn't always work!
In one branch of the Fife family, I got to 4 possibilities for the one person in abt 1780 and have NO idea which one is mine - so I imagine you could well start at this point. If someone else has some ideas I would also be most interested.
Good luck
Trish
