Dufftown, a small police burgh in Mortlach parish, Banffshire, 1 mile S of a station on the Great North of Scotland railway, this being 4 miles SE of Craigellachie Junction, 10¾ SW of Keith, and 64 NW of Aberdeen. With Conval and Ben Rinnes to the SW, Auchendoun Castle to the SE, and Balvenie Castle to the N, it stands, 600 feet above sea-level, within ½ mile of the Fiddich's left bank; and founded in 1817 by James Duff, fourth Earl of Fife, it is laid out in the form of a crooked-armed cross, with a square and a tower in the centre. At it are a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and railway telegraph departments, branches of the North of Scotland and the Aberdeen Town and County Banks (the latter rebuilt in 1880), 7 insurance agencies, an hotel, a distillery, and lime-works. Cattle fairs are held on the third Thursday of May and September, and the fourth Thursday of all the other ten months; feeing fairs on the Wednesday before 26 May, the third Wednesday of July, and the Wednesday before 22 November. Mortlach parish church stands 3½ furlongs to the S; and at the village itself are a Free church, the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of the Assumption (1825; 200 sittings), and St Michael's Episcopal church (1880; 130 sittings), a pretty little Gothic building this. Queen Victoria drove through Dufftown in the summer of 1867. Its municipal constituency numbered 230 in 1882, when the annual value of real property was £2300. Pop. (1841) 770, (1851) 998, (1861) 1249, (1871) 1250, (1881) 1252.—Ord. Sur., sh. 85,1876.

(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)