As an American just starting to research my Scottish family history, I'm finding that it seems almost impossible to definitively connect the person who came over on the boat with a date and place of birth in the home country. In my case, I have a couple of possible candidates for the Robert England who came to New Brunswick, Canada, around 1785 (one from Speymouth, Moray, born 1756, the other from Belhelvie, Aberdeen, born 1768), but I'm not sure it's possible to say for sure which is the "right" one. I can't imagine the difficulty involved if the surname was more common! A correspondent says that, in those days, passengers on the ships were essentially "human ballast" that came to North America full of people and left full of lumber -- and ship records obviously might be lacking.
Obviously, many of you having the advantage of being in Scotland
don't have this problem. But I wonder if any of you folks have suggestions for attempting to bridge the "Atlantic gap" for good. Paul
I have only 
One of them appears in Maryland in about 1764. No idea where he came from except a "family tradition" that he came from Edinburgh 
Same with my Gunns, Frasers and others... I keep hoping that if I dig deeply enough in the archives at the U.S. end, I will find something that will tie them to a particular area in Scotland. Sometimes, if you are very lucky, there will be a will in Scotland that will list beneficiaries in the States, or vice versa. There is still a lot of information out there that is not yet online. If you're able to go to county archives at the point of your ancestor's entry into the U.S., i.e. their first-known residence, there just might be something... I keep hoping, anyway!