MacDonald or Gillis from Isle of Lewis - circa 1804

[Nathan]

Just a quick note... Obituaries often have wrong information in them, they are a clue, not gospel. The bereft, neighbors, and pastors are not reliable sources. When you see in records such as ship manifests, other travel records and sometimes church documents that someone was from "somewhere" it might not be that they were born there or their family was from there... it might mean where they JUST came from. This is most common on ship records.

I am just starting to learn about Scottish research, oh boy, lots to learn!

Fair enough and thanks for sharing what you've learned. The thing is, I'm not going solely based on an obituary. I'm basing this on:

A) My family's oral and written tradition of where we come from. Malcolm's grandson and Angus' son, Malcolm, wrote a fairly detailed family history which was transcribed and added to by father's aunt and circulated through the family.
B) The grave stone that clearly says, "A Native of Lewis, Scotland". They could have put anything on the gravestone but chose to etch in stone that he was a proud son of Lewis.
C) The obituary which has been handed down from generation to generation.
D) Conversations with elderly members of the community who remember some of these people and the Lewis dialect of Gaidhlig they spoke.

Everything fits together. Angus converted to Catholicism the year after he arrived in Canada. If he arrived from Barra for example, he likely would have already been Roman Catholic.

That said, if he was 65 and not 64, that would be conceivable.

After years of research, we've filled in many branches of the tree besides the paternal line that has been handed down. Unfortunately, it's that jump across the pond that's been elusive. I'll get there.