MacDonald or Gillis from Isle of Lewis - circa 1804

[Nathan]

One problem I've found in my own research is that when what-is-now-Canada was just a colony of the British Empire, people from the old country didn't need to be naturalized as immigrants, so there is less documentation in that regard. My latest angle is to try to find grants of land by the Crown, which can contain information about the emigrant's place of origin. This works for my family because they were farmers and settled in an area that was on the frontier of the colony, in the Upper Ottawa Valley.

Finding this information has meant taking a lead from Ancestry.ca to an old index of land grants that is on microfiche at the library. Once I sorted out the citation, it points to Letters Patent that are held in the Quebec Archives. I've now sent a request to them for copies and am very thankful that I speak French because their order form is not available in English

Maybe something like that could work, if your family was granted Crown land?

Another way of going about it might be to look for a passenger list from the boat they arrived on? It helps that you know when they arrived and where.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I can't find any boats that arrived in Pictou from the Highlands in 1804. Of course there must have been ships, but the records are not all online. We haven't been able to tie Malcolm (perhaps Calum) to a particular land grant but Angus inherited Roderick MacDougall's land grant after he married his daughter.

My Canadian records are pretty up to date from Angus forward. What I'm looking for is probably:

a) A record of birth or christening for Angus.
b) A record of the marriage of Malcolm McDonald and Margaret Gillis in the Hebrides (prob Lewis, not sure which parish).
c) A written record of the existence of a Reverend Gillis with a daughter Margaret on Lewis at that time. He may have officiated over several weddings and funerals etc.. so if he lived, there should be some paper trail.

One issue is Margaret's name could be recorded as Maidread, Morag, Peggy... who knows...