Need Help Deciphering A Crofting Hamlet Name In Dailly parish 1700's

[Alan of Kaslo]

Greetings

I have a bunch of relatives from Dailly parish area in the 1700's. On their birth certificates it says the same thing for all the kids. It says that the father David Stewart 1714 was born in "Cookiestown". I swear that is the closest thing it looks like. The record is listed

I spent many hours pouring over old parish maps of Ayrshire. It was so fun! I saw every wild name possible for crofting hamlets but nothing close to Cookiestown.

Does anyone have a clue what this location name is? Or where it is?

The attached image is from 1714. The writing of the word in 1750's is harder to read do to the penmanship. It always looks roughly like Cookiestown/toun.

Thanks in advance for any help. Hope the attachment works.

[Alan of Kaslo]

Previous post was with the location was written in 1714. Here is how it is written in the 1750's for one of his children (all born in Dailly parish).

[Flattybasher9]

I wonder if he was born in County Tyrone, in Cookstown.

I would have a read of the following :-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookstown

There may be a family link to the Stewarts.

Malky

[philipsearching]

I wondered about Ireland.  There was a Cokistoun which seems to have been near Elgin in Morayshire - but that's about 240 miles from Dailly according to the AA route map.  I can't find any likely place in or near Ayrshire.

Philip

[ColC]

Information on Dailly is on http://ayrshireroots.co.uk

Sadly Cookistown is not mentioned but there is a transcript of the 1841 census which lists every abode. I thought it might be of interest if you have not seen it before?

Colin

[Alan of Kaslo]

i used the old military map of 1750 and others and went inch by inch first around Dailly parish area then circled out. I get a strong feeling its nearby old dailly or dailly kirk as all the other names i could decipher from other births were around. I also did see a Cookistown hamlet in Aberdeenshire on an old map.

Thanks by the way,

[Forfarian]

If it just says 'in Cookistown' it is a place in the same parish, or maybe just over the border of a neighbouring parish. If it were in Ireland or some other parish it would specify where. So please don't get sidetracked into looking for Cook(i)(e)sto(w)ns in Aberdeenshire, Moray, Ireland or indeed the other one that springs to mind, in the parish of Brechin.

It's not listed in the OS Name Book, and I haven't found it on the older maps, so either it's a cottage or croft that had vanished by the 1840s, or its name had changed before then.

Unless it's the place labelled Couston on https://maps.nls.uk/view/74400286, perhaps?

[Alan of Kaslo]

I did consider coustoun and coriston and cookstoun. None quite fit that were in the parish and in all the birth records from 1714 to 1760 they use that same location Cookiestown. I have been able to find quite a few of the other crofts and hamlets listed in the same birth lists. Not this one though.

[Forfarian]

If you have found a Cookstoun in or very close to the parish of Dailly, that will be it.

Vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) are easily lost over time, but consonants aren't, so you are really looking for c*k*st*n, though one or more of the middle letters could also get lost.

A bit of a gamble, but you might like to read the Statistical Account of Dailly https://stataccscot.edina.ac.uk/static/statacc/dist/viewer/osa-vol10-Parish_record_for_Dailly_in_the_county_of_Ayrshire_in_volume_10_of_account_1/ - to see if it mentions the names of the heritors, that is, the people who owned the land, and then look in http://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/scancatalogue/welcome.aspx and see if any of their estate records have survived and if so where they are. You might find rental records with names of tenants.