My connection to the Dalgetty family is through my Grandmother on my father’s side. Her maiden name was Dalgetty.  An uncommon name in Scotland and linked very closely to one or two particular areas.

The surname Dalgetty is listed under the Clan McDuff. McDuff was the laird of the land and the Dalgettys had land under the Clan McDuff during the 17th century. The Dalgetty tartan falls under the Clan Hay even though the surname falls under the Clan McDuff but that could well be because of the variation in the name.

There are believed to be two sources for the name Dalgetty one is Dalgety Bay near Dunfermline, the other being the lands of Dalgety or Delgaty in Aberdeenshire, formerly belonging to a family of that name, so called from the Gaelic word “dealg”, prickle.

The name first appears regularly in records in the late 17th Century. Through the years the family name Dalgetty has had several spelling variations, due to the way it was pronounced as someone else wrote it – Dalgety, Dalgaty, Dalgetie, Delgaty, Dalgity, Dalgiety, Delgetie, Dalgitie and even Daigati – I can see how that would have been difficult given their accent!

The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Hercules Delgaty, who received a grant of forfeited goods in Brechin, which was dated 1594, in the “Registrum episopatus Brechinensis”, during the reign of King James V1 of Scotland, 1567 – 1625.   

It is an uncommon surname with only 29 recorded families in Scotland in the 1891 census with the spelling Dalgetty – 5 of those in Ross and Cromarty (which would all have been connected to us.). However, when you start looking at the various spellings of the surname, this amounts to around 200 families in Scotland – still an uncommon surname and makes for interesting research!

So far, I’ve traced our line of Dalgetty back to Dunnichen in Angus in the mid 1700s. The spelling in the early parish registers is with one ‘t’.  

The centre of the universe for our Dalgetty family is a farm called Bogroy in Tore on the Black Isle.  This has belonged to our family since at least the early 1800s and is currently in the capable hands of my Dad’s cousin John Dalgetty.

Below is a photo from the last family reunion we had at Tore in 2011 which included some cousins we’d never met before and came along thanks to a shout out in the local paper.

Plus a pretty awesome cake made by my Aunty Eunice (Atkins nee Allan) showing all the different families.