Data is currently held on about 10,000 BDM, census and other records of people in Scotland surnamed Comrie, drawn from indices of old parish records and (from 1855) of statutory registrations and other sources held by Scotland's People.  This has been extended by nearly four thousand records from England, New Zealand, Australia and Canada and by personal knowledge of the descendents of William Comrie and Margaret Roy whose eight known children were born in or near Comrie, Perthshire, between 1763 and 1779.  Records from other sources are gradually being added. There are now 15972 vital records.

Correspondence is being maintained with Comries in Scotland, England, South Africa, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica.

Comry (only three or four known examples)

The clan MacGregor was outlawed by James VI in 1603, the clan chief and a dozen of his fellow leaders being executed in Edinburgh.  All people named MacGregor were forced to change their names or risk death.  Many adopted maternal or other related surnames, but several living in Comrie (Perthshire) appear to have adopted the name of their home parish.  There are however a few (three or four have been found) records of the  variant Comry from the sixteenth century.

The following are descended from William Comrie (1763-1836), the eldest known child of William Comrie and Margaret Roy (born c.1740), and Janet McLachlan.  William and Janet settled in Drummie Farm, Fowlis Wester, Perthshire, Scotland, between 1808 and 1810.   This farm, now much enlarged, is still worked by their Comrie descendants.

Leslie John Comrie (1893-1950) is regarded as the father of scientific computing.  A 2*gt-grandson of the above William Comrie and Margaret Roy, his grandfather James emigrated to New Zealand in 1857 or 1858. Leslie studied in what is now Auckland University, graduating in 1916.  He was severly injured in France during the first world war, after which he settled in England. He was the first director of the Computing Section of the British Astronomical Association, and became deputy superintendent of the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1926. He was the first person to use punched cards for scientific computation, and published many books of mathematical tables.  In 1937 he founded the world's first private company for scientific computation.  The Computing Laboratory of the University of Auckland in named in his honour.

John Dixon Comrie (1875-1939) studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was appointed lecturer in medical history in 1906. During the first world war he served in France as lieutenant colonel of a large medical division in a general hospital, and he accompanied the BEF to northern Russia in 1919 as consulting physician.   He later served in various consultancy positions, as vice-president of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, and as chairman of the Scottish committee of the BMA.  He was the founding editor of Black’s Medical Dictionary, remained as editor for over thirty years, and was still acknowledged as editor in editions nearly twenty years after his death.   He also wrote an 850 page History of Scottish Medicine. He was the gt-grandson of the above William Comrie and Margaret Roy, his father of the same name having been a well loved general practitioner in Peterhead. 

The author's descent is through Peter Comrie (1815-1891), the fifth son of William and Janet, who ran Drummie Farm after the death of an elder brother in 1859 until his own death;  Alexander Comrie (1847-1913), Peter's third son, who was born on Drummie Farm but moved to Perth after his marriage (1873) to Mary Paterson;  David Paterson Comrie (1875-1935), Alexander's eldest son, born in Perth, who moved to Aberdeen in the late 1890's and married (1900) Isabella Anderson;  Anne (Annie) Chalmers Comrie (1902-1994), David's second child and eldest daughter, born in Aberdeen, who married (1927) William Wren and died in West Sussex.

Over 2,800 Comrie births are recorded in Scotland between 1636 and 2017.  Other areas are currently under investigation, but examples are known in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the united States and Canada.

No records exist for the parish of Comrie before 1693, but 41 Comrie births are recorded elsewhere in Scotland between 1636 and 1692, mainly in Edinburgh and Leith.  During the first forty years after 1693, 75% (129 out of 171) of Comrie births in Scotland are within the Parish of Comrie.  During the next forty years, 64% (137 out of 215) are within ten miles of Comrie, and the percentage decreases gradually thereafter.  The last recorded Comrie birth in Comrie itself was in 1967, but since that date Comrie has no longer been a separate district, its events being recorded in Crieff.  Since 2000 there have been five Comrie births within ten miles of Comrie.

BMD and census records have been extracted from the indices of Scotlands People.  They are supplemented by records from FreeBMD for England and Wales, and from personal sources.