News from Finlaystone and the Worldwide Clan
CLAN CENTRE “FRIENDS” BECOME “MEMBERS”
Following the agreement of the Conclave to the request by the Trustees
that Clan Centre “Friends” should henceforth be called “Members”,
the Curatorial staff are working on the design of new membership cards and
certificates which will be issued with the April/May edition of the
newsletter. The cards will give members free access to the Finlaystone
Estate, in addition to the other benefits of membership: i.e. discounts on
gatherings and other events organised by the Trustees, and on genealogical
research commissioned from the Centre’s curator and genealogist; plus
the twice-yearly newsletter. In order to provide some benefits as well to
the members of the various clan societies and branches who will hopefully
be meeting the Conclave “challenge” and making small annual
contributions to the Centre, it is hoped that our long-term plan to
publish a “Clan MacMillan International Magazine”, to be sent
free to the members of all such branches and societies, will also reach
fruition next year (if it does the newsletter will be sent to Clan Centre’s
members - and only to its members - as an insert to the Magazine, and will
still be the place to find exclusive news on the Centre, the chief and his
family, and on the latest developments at Finlaystone). Branch/Society
pages on the Clan Centre Website is another way in which the Trustees feel
they may be able to provide some concrete benefit to the clan bodies that
do meet the Conclave “challenge”. We can put as many extra pages
on our website as we like for no extra cost, and it makes sense for as
much information as possible to be located at one site on the world-wide
web. This will not of course detract from existing branch/society
websites, to which our pages will provide hot-links, and the contents of
such pages on our site will ultimately be determined by the branch/society
in question (i.e. you can provide the raw material for your page, and once
we’ve made it up to fit the style and content of the rest of the site
you will be given the chance to OK it before publication). So let’s
have content please. Contributions to Clan Centre Newsletters/Magazines
are also welcome from all clanspeople. Tell newsletter readers what you
think the Centre should (or shouldn’t!) be doing, and inform the clan
at large about any aspect of MacMillan activity, past or present, that you
think may be of interest to them.
THE
CHIEFLY BIRTHDAY BASH
The evening's events raised over £900 - which is about $1300 US - on
behalf of Macmillan Cancer Relief; and with some particularly generous
individual donations towards its costs the MacMillenium Mini-Gathering as
a whole also resulted in a small profit for the Clan Centre (the names of
donors will be published with the financial statement for the year 2000 in
the next newsletter).
Decisions taken at the Conclave should ensure more long-term financial
stability for the Centre, assuming that all branches and societies are
genuinely prepared to meet the challenge to which their representatives
signed-up (see the chief’s “Recollections” on pages 4 &
5).
ARTHUR AND BARBARA MACMILLAN
The chief's son and his wife - pictured left at the MacMillennium Chiefly
Birthday Bash - have moved back into Finlaystone with their sons Rory and
Hugo after the sale of their house in Kilbarchan.
Work on George and Jane’s new flat at the back of the mansion house
has started.
MICHIGAN MCMILLENS
Donald and Irma McMillen from Pontiac, MI, were among the many clansfolk
to write and congratulate the Chief on his 70th birthday, and we thank
them for their generous donation to the Centre which also marked the birth
to their son Matt and his wife Jeanne of a son who was named Gordon Donald
in honour of George’s father General Sir Gordon MacMillan, who was
chief of the clan when the family visited Finlaystone in 1984 (the baby
has been nicknamed “Lil General”!).
We noted with interest that some 190 members of Donald’s extended
family were gathering this summer in Woodland, MI, as they do every
Olympic year to hold a McMillen Clan Highland Games.
ROYAL HONOUR FOR CLAN CENTRE TREASURER
Brigadier Alistair Macmillan, who is the British Army’s “Commander
Medical LAND”, has been appointed the Queen’s Household
Physician in Scotland and will from time to time have to attend on Her
Majesty when she is in residence at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. The
Chief’s brother Sir John MacMillan attended on the Queen as a Member
of her bodyguard - The Royal Company of Archers - in 1973; and their
father Sir Gordon MacMillan attended on both Queen Elizabeth and her
father King George VI in the same capacity. Sir Gordon’s uniform as a
Royal Archer is the latest addition to the displays in the Public Room of
the Clan Centre at Finlaystone.
THE OLD MACMILLAN WHISKY RAFFLE
Some years ago, an enterprising whisky shipper had the idea of putting his wares in eye-catching bottles and selling them to Japanese secretaries as they flew home from holidays taken around the Pacific Rim. This earned him an Export Award. Flushed with this success he tried again producing a bottle with an antique look about it. After much research to ascertain what name might sit easily on the Japanese tongue, he came up (rather surprisingly) with “Old MacMillan”. In return for a generous donation to the Clan Centre, I authorised his use of a modified version of my arms, to give the package some respectability. Besides the cash, he also gave me some bottles of the whisky. When Audrey MacMillan (of Long Island, New York) heard that we were almost at the end of our supply of complimentary bottles, she and Jim decided to organise a world-wide raffle to finish them off. Branches were sent a selling kit. They got an enthusiastic reponse. Of the two surviving bottles, one inspired a massive donation to the Clan Centre. We drew the winning ticket for the other on Tuesday 3rd October with as much ceremony as we could muster – flags, crest, sword, and mementoes symbolising the world-wide clan. The lucky subscriber was John McMillan of Ponsonby, Auckland, New Zealand. I hope that the 1,449 unlucky ones will take comfort from the thought that their generosity has benefitted the Clan Centre by a similar number of pounds. [Tickets were priced at one pound sterling each over here, though most were sold for a roughly equivalent sum in US dollars - Ed] By enabling the Trustees of the Clan Centre to pay Graeme Mackenzie and Pauline Simpson and provide the necessary machines, this money will help them to provide a valuable service to the world-wide clan through the web site and newsletter, by handling numerous inquiries, and by pressing ahead with Project MAOL (the entering of all MacMillans, past and present, on a computerised genealogical index).
George MacMillan
Drawing the raffle at Finlaystone in - where else - the Drawing Room
The raffle pictures were not originally published in Newsletter No. 15, but in No. 16