MacMillans in Kintyre
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Campbeltown, home of the Chief's ancestors in the late 18th and early 19th century,
and of many other MacMillan families over the centuries (photograph by Mike McMillen, MN).

Some 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.