QUESTION: Did 'Huguenots' settle in Scotland?

[Keadl]

My Petticrew grandfather said the family were of French Huguenot descent and originally settled somewhere in the Scottish Borders region.
My DNA test with My Heritage shows dozens of distant cousins that are French, Scandinavian and Eastern European.

[Gilmoredoug]

Looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. So my anecdotal family history has my ancestors leaving France in the 1600’s for the Scottish isles. They then continued on the N Ireland at some point. When in Ireland their surname was Gilmour.

Emigration from France in 1600’s sounds possibly Huguenot? In Ireland they were farmers. Earliest record there in late 1700’s.

Can anyone print me in a direction that I can do some digging. Is there a western isle that seemed to harbour some Huguenot emigrees more than another. Is there a French name that Gilmour may have derived from?

Appreciate any help at all

Doug

[Forfarian]

Is there a French name that Gilmour may have derived from?

According to G F Black's The Surnames of Scotland Gilmour and variants are derived from Gaelic Gille Moire, 'Servant of (the Virgin) Mary.

There's a longish article listing mediaeval references to Gilmours, almost all of them in the Lowlands or south of Scotland, and none in any of the islands.

That's not to say, of course, that Huguenots from France didn't move to the islands and/or adopt the name Gilmour. Just that Black's book doesn't mention any such connection.

[Gilmoredoug]

thx I get so focused on my surname I forget that it may have been a female from France that married a Gilmour already in Scotland. Making it harder to track

[TessieCapn]

Our family "lore" has it that we are of Huguenot descent. The Moncure family of Virginia was begun by John Moncure, born John Moncur, in 1710 in Scotland. He was accepted into the "Society of The Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia," which was a Huguenot group. I am still trying to confirm whether the family was in fact Huguenot, but our family has believed it to be so for generations.

[Forfarian]

According to G F Black's The Surnames of Scotland the earliest documentary reference to a Moncur in Scotland was some time between 1237 and 1248, and there are several more references before the Reformation, so the surname did exist in Scotland in pre-Huguenot times.

That's not to say that no Huguenots of the same name came to Scotland after the Reformation, of course. Or the Huguenot could have been someone of a different surname who came to Scotland and married a Moncur.

[TessieCapn]

Thanks for the reference. I'll find Black's book. It never occurred to me that a Moncur had *married* a Huguenot and that was the start of the association.

[Forfarian]

The Surnames of Scotland is at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015011274175&seq=25 and possibly also elsewhere.

[hdw]

My Petticrew grandfather said the family were of French Huguenot descent and originally settled somewhere in the Scottish Borders region.
My DNA test with My Heritage shows dozens of distant cousins that are French, Scandinavian and Eastern European.

I've posted elsewhere about Petticrew/Pettigrew. The first appearance of the name Petticrew in Scotland is in 1296 in the "Ragman Roll", the list of small landowners who did homage to King Edward I of England, and that Thomas Petticrew was in the Monklands area of Lanarkshire (modern Coatbridge and Airdrie). The name is also found at an early date in Shettleston in the east of Glasgow, and in Ayrshire. This long predates the Huguenots and I believe these Petticrews would have come over from France during the Norman Conquest. The Lanarkshire Petticrews seem to have had links with the powerful Hamiltons, an Anglo-Norman family who were given land in Lanarkshire.
I had Petticrew ancestors in Northern Ireland whose own ancestors probably came from Ayrshire.

Harry