As this meeting was the AGM, business came first and an AGM report will appear in the next Journal. Thereafter we were delighted to have as our Speaker Sheila Murray, a founder member who has served over the years in several capacities on the Society’s committee and who is the current hardworking editor of the journal and our SAFHS representative. Her topic was "James Crosbie’s Diary".
A few years ago Sheila was asked if our Society would be interested in a diary kept by James Crosbie (1805 - 1893), who had been an elder and then Treasurer of Alloway Church from 1868 to 1886. The diary turned out to be a treasure trove of information on Alloway and district. Sheila extracted details of births, marriages and deaths and published these in May 2006. What we heard this evening was Sheila’s research into the man himself and the people and local places he mentioned. He seemed to have been greatly concerned with mortality and a vast number of his entries were concerned with the deaths of local people - a source of great interest to family historians. Sheila had built up an excellent PowerPoint presentation to accompany her talk; together they provided us with an insight into our own neighbourhood in a bygone age.
Sheila Dinwoodie.
