Former Lectures and Courses
For further information about former lectures and courses, please revisit the website.
Banks, Bankers and their Customers
The Dumfries and Galloway Story to 1850
A course of four lectures at weekly intervals at
The Community Centre, Castle Douglas
Friday, 25th Feb to Friday, 18 Mar 2011
Dumfries Banks and Bankers of the Past
This guided walk uses current buildings to reconstruct the early days of banking in Dumfries so telling a story that is familiar in the present.
The circular tour will start and finish at Dumfries museum. Easy walking on pavements and footpaths.
The Life and Times of David Currie of Newlaw
This course describes the trials and tribulations of an eighteenth century merchant / landowner against the background of the Kirkcudbright tobacco trade,
the smuggling trade and the slave trade.
David Currie was bankrupted by his association with John Park of Ayrshire and Roscoff in France, John Christian, former cashier of the ill-fated Douglas-Heron (Ayr) Bank et al. in a
slave trading scheme based on the Island of Dominica in the West Indies. In an attempt to raise money he borrowed £400 from the Mull of Galloway Smuggling Company, who in return rented his land at Balcary Bay.
The Life and Times of David Currie of Newlaw
A Tale of Seven Bank Notes
People from the Past
This course replaces the day school planned for 5th Nov 2010. The course concentrates on Dumfries and Galloway people who lived in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries.
It will include Admiral Keith Stewart, Drs Cathcart, Maxwell and Ravenscroft, George McMurdo and James Credie.
Lifestyles 1700 to 1850
This course continues and expands the Lifestyles lectures given during the summer term of 2009. The topics include: Printers, Publishers and Booksellers;
Public and Private Libraries; Furniture, Travel and Education.
The Dumfries Cholera Outbreak, 1832 - A Guided Walk with Frances Wilkins
This guided walk reconstructs the dramatic story of the 1832 Dumfries Cholera Outbreak. Where did it start? How fast did it spread?
What were the theories about its origin and cure? Where did the victims live? How did the doctors cope?
The circular tour will start and finish at Dumfries Museum. Easy walking on pavements and footpaths.
The Trials and Tribulations of an 18th Century Nurseryman
Smugglers and the Revenue
The Other Side of the Coin
The Story of the Revenue's Fight Against Smuggling
This course provides a new approach to an old topic - the Revenue and the Smugglers. After a reminder of the omnipresent smuggling trade,
the course looks at the different ways in which this problem could be tackled. Could it be stopped at its source: the Isle of Man? If the Island
belonged to the English Crown would smuggling end "for all time"? This having failed as a scheme, would an increase in the numbers of Customs and Excise
staff available to patrol the coasts reduce the flow of contraband goods? Would these officers, reporting to two different Boards of Commissioners in Edinburgh,
be persuaded to co-operate? Or would competition for the larger share of a fixed amount of reward money mean that the rivalry continued?
Would threats from the military or the navy deter the smugglers? Was there any other method?
5 classes at fortnightly intervals
The Community Centre, Castle Douglas
Lock, Stock & Barrel: Robert Burns, Dr William Maxwell and a Pair of Pistols
Robert Burns The Exciseman: Who seized the Rosamund?
Medical Treatments in Dumfries & Galloway 1700 to 1850
Dr. William Maxwell and the Dumfries Cholera Outbreak of 1832
Gardens Great and Small
A Route to Your Roots - Family History Seminar
www.family-history-seminar.freeola.com
18th Century Lifestyles in Dumfries and Galloway
This course looks at general lifestyles of people in the area from those living on the large estates to their employees. This includes their clothes,
food, furniture, doctors bills, transport and entertainment.
4 classes at fortnightly intervals
The Community Centre, Castle Douglas
Gardens Great and Small
Planters and their Houses II
This is the second part of a course about people from Dumfries & Galloway who were involved in the Transatlantic
Slave Trade and their houses in this area, in England or in the Americas. It is not necessary for students
to have attended the first part of this course.
5 classes at fortnightly intervals
Smuggling in Cuninghame in the 18th Century
Lock, Stock & Barrel: Robert Burns, Dr William Maxwell and a Pair of Pistols
Dumfries & Galloway in the 1740s
This course looks at what several individuals within Dumfries & Galloway were doing during the 1740s. Some of
these people are familiar names to those attending the courses on a regular basis, including James Maxwell
of Kirkconnell and Robert Herries of Rotterdam, others are unknown, so far. It assesses the impact (if any)
of Prince Charles’s expedition (1745/46) on their lives. Was there an interruption to their normal activities?
Did their lives subsequently change in any significant way? Or was the ‘Forty-five merely something heard about
in the newspapers and journals?
This is a modification of the course previously advertised.
4 classes at fortnightly intervals
Kings Arms Hotel, St. Andrew Street, Castle Douglas
Medical Treatments in Dumfries & Galloway 1700-1850
Surgeons' accounts, a physician's thesis presented in Latin at the University of Edinburgh, his day book some
years later, detailed advice on the treatment of a complaint - the patient died within days, the contents of an
apothecary's shop, an apothecary's manuscript textbook, herbal remedies ... this range of documents will be used
to discuss the medical treatments available in Dumfries & Galloway between 1700 and 1850.
Lesser Hall, Kirkcudbright Town Hall
A Route to Your Roots - Family History Seminar
www.family-history-seminar.freeola.com
Reconstructing Two Galloway Gardens: Kirkconnell and Genoch
This day school uses a variety of contemporary sources to compare two Galloway gardens in the 18th and 19th
centuries: Kirkconnell near New Abbey, a working garden producing fruit for sale in Dumfries and Genoch near
Stranraer, which displayed the interests of its owners, the Cathcarts. Four posters describing Kirkconnell
garden between 1699 and 1905 will be on display and there will be plants for sale - identified in an 1820s seed
catalogue in the Maxwell of Kirkconnell archive.