MacMillans in Kintyre
Campbeltown, Kintyre's largest town. Our Chief's ancestors lived here in the late 18th and early 19th century.
Ben Ghuillean, Kintyre's only mountain. The preceding photo of Campbeltown was taken from near its summit.
The remains of the Royal Castle of Tarbert. John de Lany was constable of the castle in 1326.
A farm on the west coast of Kintyre with the Isle of Jura in the background.
A Machrihanish graveyard containing numerous M'Millan and sept graves.
MacMillans and other descendants of Gilchrist "Maolan" were probably settled in Kintyre throughout the Middle Ages, and the immediate descendants of Alexander of the Cross are on record as royal tenants in the Mull of Kintyre in the early 16th century. Alexander WS of Dunmore (1698-1770) spent much of the wealth he accumulated in his legal practice buying up estates in Kintyre upon which he probably settled many of his relatives and more distant clan connections. His uncle John was a tenant in Carrine, in the south of Kintyre, in about 1700; and John's son Alexander was Tacksman of Lagalgarve - to the north west of Campbeltown - in 1750. Lagalgarve's son Alexander "the Merchant" traded out of Campbeltown to Liverpool and Ireland (where he died in 1789) - and probably also across the Atlantic since his son Captain William Bennett MacMillan RM corresponded with cousins in North Carolina.
Another prominent family of MacMillans were at one time lairds of Carradale - from whence the ancestors of the Publishing MacMillans are said to have crossed to Arran - and in the early 18th century the Tacksmen of Cour were also MacMillans. In 1824 the estate of Carskey, in the south of Kintyre, came into the possession of MacMillans by marriage with a MacNeil heiress; and there were MacMillan tenants on the nearby estates of the MacDonalds of Sanda. Descendants of some of these MacMillan families are still to be found living in and around Campbeltown today.
1841 census
M'Millans were the most populous of surnames in the 1841 census in Kintyre and this doesn't include sept names. Surnames numbered as follows: M'millan 1047 (without sept names), Campbell 462, M'lean 374, M'neil 340 and M'donald 207. Read more in the Clan MacMillan International Magazine, December 2016 issue.
See a map of Kintyre showing clan sites. This is a PDF.
Other articles related to Kintyre in Clan MacMillan International magazines and newsletters:
MacMillan Homes in Kintyre - Nov./Dec. 2008, Issue 11