Quote Originally Posted by Nathan View Post
I didn't see a man named Malcolm MacDonald with two sons named Angus and Jon (and a daughter) from Lewis on any of the ship registers I looked at on Ancestry.ca a few months ago when I was paying for the full membership.

My worry is that I could pay through the nose trawling incomplete databases and coming up empty. The existing records are far from comprehensive in the late 1700s and not all of them are even online. Thought I'd post this here in the hopes that there was a cousin out there that had already hit the jackpot. Either that or someone with a full subscription to one of these databases that wouldn't mind taking a boo.
As you say, a lot of stuff isn't online. On the bright side, new documents and info are being added every day!

What I'm seeing is that Ancestry.ca doesn't actually have very many ship lists, but rather indexes names listed in books. There are a few hits for your ancestors that look possible, but don't give enough info online to tell for sure... Some of those books are in the York library so I'll take a look for you the next time I go up to campus Other ones are in the National Library and Archives of Canada, which you can order photocopies of very inexpensively.

I don't want to waste a bunch of money either, so I'm using free online sources to point me towards things stored in archives, rather than signing up for more paid services. Like you, I have some info about my ancestors and I'm using that to narrow down my "haystack" Nonetheless, it seems that to get back further is going to require sorting through potential leads and a process of elimination. Basically, it's going to take effort and research

It would be super nice to find a long lost cousin who has the answers, though. I'm hoping for the same thing myself