The entire directory may be searched with other pages on this site for surnames using the site search function. Your first stop for researching your ancestors from any of these towns should be the GENUKI:Ayrshire  site or Ayrshire ScotlandGenWeb which have more information regarding Ayrshire and the towns in this directory. You should also search and post your surnames on Ayrshire Surnames Index Database.

The following item appeared in Ayrshire Notes published by the Ayrshire Archæological & Natural History Society. Thanks to David McClure and his Ayrshire History site for this item.

Pigot's Directory

This commentary on Pigot's Directory appeared in the Kilmarnock Weekly Post in June 1860:
"Piggott's Directory - The titles of some books are but a sorry index of their contents. They are sometimes such that the most learned would shrink to own, and promise information which it is not in the power of man to bestow. In short, they are literary shams. Piggott's Directory for Scotland is now lying before us. It is not a literary work in the common acceptation of the term. It is a matter of fact thing, and the information it has to communicate lies perfectly within the reach of the understanding - indeed, within the reach of an ordinary man of business, if he were to set his mind to it. Yet this book, in a very large part, has a wrong title applied to it. It should have been called a misdirectory. We glanced over a portion under the head Kilmarnock, and blunders egregious and numerous presented themselves. We gave up the task of scrutinising as too laborious and disagreeable, and shut the book, which is badly printed and miserably bound. We hope, for the sake of commercial men who require a reliable directory, that if ever the publishers or proprietors of Piggott prepare another issue, they will exhibit that scrupulous care which such a task demands."