Would love some guidance on what landmarks etc I could take my family to when we visit Perth later this year but understand that we all may know roughly the same as each other.
I lived in Perth for about 7 years.
Prepare throughly before you arrive. Look up all the original documents relating to your family to see if they tell you exactly where in the various parishes they lived.
Errol is a parish about 16 miles east of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO2522Dron is part of the parish of Dunbarney and Dron, and is about 8 miles south of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO1416Tibbermore is a parish about 6 miles west of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO0523St Martins is a parish about 7 miles north of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO1530Scone (pronounced
skoon to rhyme with 'moon' and 'soon') is a parish about 2 miles north-east of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO1326Redgorton is a parish about 5 miles north of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO0828Kilspindie is a parish about 8 miles east-north-east of Perth
https://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO2125Get yourself a decent map. This means NOT Google maps or similar, because individual farms or cottages won't be named there. Also, you can annotate a paper map to mark the places you want to go to.
The best maps for your purpose are the Ordnance (NOT Ord
inance) Survey Explorer maps, but unfortunately Perth is in a corner of one of these so you would need to get three sheets to cover all the places listed.
Next best are the Ordnance Survey Landranger maps, but again you'd need three sheets to cover everywhere on the list above.
You can order from the Ordnance Survey a map tailored to your own requirements - being a time-served map nerd I've never done this. However I've had a look and the available dimensions won't cover all your locations. Have a good rake about at
https://shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/maps/You can also buy a one-month subscription to allow you to view the maps on a phone, tablet or desktop.
Sometimes places disappear or change their name over time.
If there's a place that you can't find on the modern maps, it can often be found on the older maps, for example the Ordnance Survey six-inch-to-the-mile or 25-inch-to-the-mile maps, which can be consulted at
https://maps.nls.uk/Middle Friartown, for example, will be Mid Friarton, about a mile west of the kirk of St Martins
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.0&lat=56.45618&lon=-3.38106&layers=168&b=1&o=100 - there's still a cottage there but the modern maps don't name it.
I haven't found
Cranloch, but using the 1841 census transcription at
https://freecen1.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl I see that its neighbours include Fairfield, New Miln, Ardgilzean and Moor of Lethendy, all of which are on this map
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.1&lat=56.45444&lon=-3.40197&layers=257&b=1&o=100 and barely a mile or so from Friarton.
All parishes have kirkyards, and you could spend many a happy hour hunting for relevant inscriptions. You can shortcut the hunt, however, by buying a copy of the relevant booklets of pre-1855 inscriptions. There are several volumes covering Perthshire, of which
https://scottish-genealogy-society.sumupstore.com/product/perthshire-east-monumental-inscriptions and
https://scottish-genealogy-society.sumupstore.com/product/perthshire-south-lower-strathearn-volume-1 are most likely to be useful to you. (It looks as if some of the volumes must be out of print.)
I would also recommend reading the parish accounts at
https://stataccscot.ed.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/county/Perth to get a feel what life was like in the late 18th and mid-19th century in the parishes where your folk lived.
Hope this helps - any questions, feel free to ask.
