Is anybody here descended from Scottish families who left Scotland because of

[csziggy]

3. It depends a lot - they do not have much from Scotland

And what they do have, is just barebones transcriptions and not scans of the originals. Scotland is a little stingy about sharing those and you pretty much have to order them from the government there.

FamilySearch.org has transcriptions of some of the information, depending on where people are from - and it is free. A lot of what they have online are indexes to stuff you can request sent to the closest Family History Library (LDS) and some of that material does have scans of original documents. There are fees for getting the material to the local library and of course fees for making copies. But you can find a lot just by looking through their online information.

As I said, Scotland is a little sticky, but I did find a lot about my husband's later Scottish relatives from the Scottish census on Ancestry. Unlike the English or Welsh census, all I got were the transcriptions, but that does give a good amount especially if your families stayed together. Some of my Welsh and Yorkshire ancestors were working by the time they were fifteen and no longer living with their families.

The biggest problem is that the British government, including Scotland and Wales, did not do census until 1841. They also did not have comprehensive record keeping of birth, marriages, and deaths until 1837. There are parish records, but they are spotty and how complete they are depends on the individual priests who were keeping the records. Plus, quality of paper, ink and handwriting varied wildly.

If you are really lucky, your ancestors will have been "non-conformists" - Quakers are the best, but many of the other Protestant sects were nearly as good, about record keeping. The ancestors I took back the farthest with original research were early Quaker converts and I have meeting records for them as far back as the mid 1600s in Cheshire.

Check out https://www.familysearch.org/ and see what you can find. Be careful of the family trees there - just like on Ancestry, they are often not accurate and cannot be trusted. At best with online trees, I use them as a resource to locate additional original sources when I have run out of options.

Another free source are local history sites but they are very dependent on volunteers and may not be of any use at all. USGenWeb.com is great in the United States for many places and totally devoid of content for others. Some state archives are great and you can get lots online. For instance, one of the reasons I have so much on my Stewart ancestor is that Chatham County, North Carolina has all their deeds online.

In the UK some counties and parishes have local history organizations but often they charge a membership fee or sell CDs of information as a way to pay for maintaining their records. So far I have not joined any, but I may for some specific areas.

http://www.freebmd.org.uk/ is a good place to look up birth, marriage and death records in the UK - they have indexes online. You would have to order copies from the British government, but at least you can get a start. But, as I said, those records only go back to 1837.

Once you use up those resources, if you want, PM me some of your ancestors - I have ancestry.com World, the British equivalent The Genealogist, and a couple of other sources. I can do some quick look ups and see how much there is.

Also, once you get to the point you think you might want to join Ancestry, call them rather than sign up online. If you enroll online, they will put you on automatic renewal. If you call, you can limit the time you are subscribed by setting a cancellation date at the end of your chosen time. Then, if you want to renew, call again and you can negotiate a lower rate, usually.