Listed here are some local and family history organisations which may be of help to you. These Ayrshire based societies welcome overseas membership applications.

• Alloway and Southern Ayrshire Family History Society

• Troon and District Family History Society

• Ayrshire - Libraries, Archives, Professionals, Societies, etc

• Ayrshire Archives  (this link works only when the servers are on during the day - Scotland time) Holdings include the kirksession records for Maybole Old, 1777-1929 (CH2/261) and Maybole West, 1863-1933 (CH2/813), as well as Maybole Free Church, 1843-1949 (CH3/869) and Maybole United Presbyterian Church, 1915-1976 (CH3/1024)

• Maybole Historical Society

• Professional Researcher

Do your homework first: Very often your best chance of finding answers to questions is not in Scotland but with resources available to you locally or on the Internet. The best way to trace your family history is to start with the present and known and work backwards. Each step to a previous generation should be carefully documented and researched before moving on. Many of the records you need to search can be found on the Internet in the form of indexes and in many cases the actual documents themselves can be ordered or even viewed over the Internet. Scottish records are especially well indexed and accessible. See http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/  Information you may have locally such as research done on other members of the family may be the critical clues to tracing the origins of your ancestors. Working from the past to the present is very difficult and for this reason we advise you to work in the other direction with the help of a local family historian or society.