About This Site

US Scots Heritage Guide is a small reference site for Americans interested in their Scottish ancestry and in Scottish traditions as they are practiced in the United States — clan gatherings, Highland games, tartans, and family-history research.

It exists because the honest answers to most heritage questions live in official Scottish institutions that many Americans have never heard of: National Records of Scotland and its ScotlandsPeople service for genealogy, the Scottish Register of Tartans for tartan questions, and the Court of the Lord Lyon for heraldry. Our guides summarize how those institutions work and link you to them directly, instead of repeating the myths that circulate at gift shops and festival stalls.

The pages here are reviewed reference material written for general readers. They are not professional advice: we are not genealogists-for-hire, attorneys, or heralds, and nothing here substitutes for the official registers and record offices we link to. When a question turns on an official determination — a grant of arms, a tartan registration, a record certificate — the linked authority is the last word, not us.