Notes on the probable origin of the name Gemmill or Gemmell

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with the election of a priest for the Parish of Kilmarnock,
that out of 300 parishioners who signed, six were
" Gemyls." They would, no doubt, be heads of houses.
At that time Kilmarnock parish included what is now
known as Fenwick, and probably the bulk of these six
families of Gemyls resided in the Fenwick portion of
the parish. After 1559 we find frequent references to
the Gemmills of Templehouse, a farm in the Parish of
Dunlop, some seven or eight miles from Fenwick, and
very probably an offshoot from the Fenwick Gemmills,
and, from about the same date, we find references to a
family of Gemmills at Cumnock, another family at Irvine,
and two or three families in Glasgow. But at none of these
places are there traces of any large settlement of Gemmills
such as we find in and round Raith at Fenwick. If we are
correct in assuming that the settlement of the Gemmills at
Fenwick was as early as about the year 1 100, or soon after
the Norman Conquest, then it seems not unlikely that the
various Gamels, Gemyls, and Gemmills in the west of
Scotland, appearing in the entries, were mostly branches
of the Fenwick stock.
My much-respected friend, the late Mr. J. A. Gemmill,
Barrister, Ottawa, whose enthusiasm for every thing
connected with the name did much to interest me in the
subject, in an interesting little volume on the Surname of
Gemmill, printed in 1901, mentions a John de Gemilston
in 1325, and that the Parish of Kirkmichael, Ayrshire, was