I've spent quite a while looking for my Blains in Wigtownshire - finally finding the family of James Blain and Mary McKibbon in OPR, with James as a farmer in Dalhabboch 'way up in the hills on Inch parish, in the headwaters of the Water of Luce. They had children (James, John and William) born in 1783 - 1790.
There was also a Peter and Jean Blain, children of a James and a different mother (Janet McBryde) born 1778 and 1782, with Jean possibly born in Doss farm. So I was trying to work out if it's a different James Blain, or two marriages of the same one, and a move...
Anyway - got the horse tax records for 1796. I was hoping for James Blain in Dalhabboch, along possibly with another farmer there. Didn't get that. Instead I got another farmer (Hugh Douglas, 1 horse) and in the farm right next door (Pularyan or 'Polleron'), 'Mrs Blain' with two horses, one of them taxable...
And a James Blain with two taxable horses farming in Doss.
I don't have records of another Blain family in Pularyan before - and haven't been seeing it coming up on the OPR births... So am speculating - could Mrs Blain be the widow of James? And the other James is possibly the James father of Jean and Peter, still there in Doss.
And to add into the whole issue, there is in 1797 a Patrick Blain, natural son of James Blain and Margaret Beggs, born at Cairn - the horse tax telling me that the farmers at Cairn are named Beggs and I'll bet she's a daughter of one of the farmers there, and James Blain is a farm worker - quite possibly they are very young.
(And I've just found a John McCubbin, natural son to Jas McCubbin, 1786, Dalhabboch, mother alas not named... which I'll guess is another tale of young farm workers, with James McCubbin being young brother or nephew of Mary McCubbin the wife of James Blain... )
I need to spend more money at SP - and I need to look at the Kirk Session records to see if anybody's getting reprimanded for fornication there!
Jenny