Seallam!
A landmark project by the Seallam! visitor centre in Northton in South Harris is the most detailed study of emigration ever carried out on islands which have experienced changes in population from early times to the present day.
The three year study on Hebridean emigration has made 250,000 digital copies of historical records.
It digitised emigration information, researched by genealogist, author and historian Bill Lawson over 40 years, making it publicly available.
In the course of the programme 20,774 emigrants were identified in the period from 1700 to 1900.
Even earlier people were uncovered like Aud the Deep Minded, born in 834AD, wife of the King of Dublin, who as a widow set off from the Hebrides to Iceland.
Around 1,500 papers, letters, photographs, books and maps relating to emigration were also catalogued in digital form by archivist Alan Brodie.
An associated exhibition, Na h-Eilthirich, (The Emigrants) is running in the Seallam! Centre in Northon.
There are now plans to host the records on the internet.
Bill Lawson explained: “The emigration digital records have become a valuable part of the Co Leis Thu? archive which holds 250,000 digital documented records for the whole of the Hebrides.
““We have traced details of 20,774 emigrants by name, in addition to which we are aware of many other unnamed and therefore usually untraceable emigrants who left in the 1770s, such as the unnamed 831 emigrants who left Lewis for Pennsylvania in 1772-73, according to a Government report of the time.”