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Scottish Immigrants to North America 1600's to 1800's. 
by David Dobsons id 

Hundreds of thousands of emigrants left Scotland for North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--but who were these Scots?   

Records identifying and documenting Scottish immigrants in the United States and Canada have been notoriously hard to find. But thanks to David Dobson's researches in record offices and archives throughout Great Britain and North America, there is now information pertaining to the identity of approximately 75,000 of these early Scots immigrants. In the course of this research  Dobson examined every known source of information, including parish records, passenger lists, prison records, church records, court records, deeds, wills, marriage contracts, Treasury papers, State papers, newspapers, and journals. As far as these historical sources will allow, a definitive body of information has been assembled. For over twenty years David Dobson has been trolling for the names of Scottish immigrants in North America, the majority of whom arrived in America from the earliest colonial times up to the Revolutionary War.

In this new CD-ROM, which captures the page images of all his earlier publications, the fruit of  David Dobson's research is available instantly, and at a fraction of the cost of the original printed publications. Variously providing such items as the immigrant's name, date and place of birth, occupation, cause of banishment, residence, names of parents and other family members, port of embarkation, destination, name of ship, place and date of arrival, place of settlement, names of spouse and children, and date and place of death, this Compact Disc incorporates all the Dobson publications  listed below:

*The Original Scots Colonists of Early America, 1612-1783
*The Original Scots Colonists . . . Supplement, 1607-1707
*The Original Scots Colonists . . . Caribbean Supplement, 1611-1707
*Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America, 1625-1825. 7 vols.
*Scots on the Chesapeake, 1607-1830
*Scots in the Carolinas, 1680-1830
*Directory of Scots Banished to the American Plantations, 1650-1775
*Scottish Soldiers in Colonial America
*Scots in the West Indies, 1707-1857
*Scots in the USA and Canada, 1825-1875 

Ships from Scotland to America, 1628-1828.  David Dobson

While most early voyages between Scotland and North America were trading voyages, the majority of American-bound cargo ships carried a small complement of passengers, and a number of these passengers are named in newspaper accounts and in records of the Exchequer now housed in the National Archives of Scotland. This volume of research is based largely on these two sources, especially the Exchequer records, which identify vessels, masters, and cargoes on which duty was charged. Such records are virtually complete from the year 1742, and though designed to raise income for the government through customs duties, they do sometimes refer to passengers.

Not all ships trading between Scotland and North America, however, carried passenger manifests, and for the majority of such ships we are given only the ship's name, the master's name, and the dates and ports of departure and arrival. This latter point is rather important as many Scottish emigrants sailed from remote bays or inlets in the Highlands and Islands where the catchment area for the emigrants was highly localised. This information can be instrumental in locating places in Scotland--perhaps a port of departure or a place of origin. So the information provided in these records may be the very clue needed to lead you back to a time and place in which to anchor your research.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Cost US$20  

      Ships and Passengers from Scotland : A compilation of on-line sources from  Scotlands Family