The Scots and Irish in Canada

We've got some of the best resources for searching for early Scottish and Irish immigrants in Canada: Some Early Scots in Maritime Canada and Erin's Sons: Irish Arrivals in Atlantic Canada both compiled by Terrence M. Punch.

Punch searched newspaper announcements and passenger lists as well as cemetery, probate, and land records to find references to Scottish and Irish immigrants in Canada. The volumes focus on early populations in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island.

Many of these record are only available in Canadian archives and difficult to find so these books provide a valuable resource for early Scottish and Irish research in North America.

Scotland's People

ScotlandsPeople is one of the largest online sources of original genealogical information, with almost 50 million records to access.

The digital images on Scotland's People, the official Government source of genealogical data for Scotland, are of deaths and burials contained in the Old Parish Registers of Scotland (OPRs). The OPRs are the records which the Church of Scotland kept of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials for the 300 years before the start of the civil registration system in 1855.

You can do free surname searches, but there is a cost for viewing the digitized documents.