Greenock and Isle of Gigha, Scotland: Where the McNeills Came From

My friend and former neighbor Mary Wayne Watson traveled to Greenock, Scotland, ancestral home of the McNeils (family history and ancestry). “Just being in Greenock, once a port city, on the very spot where my ancestors left Scotland in 1807 to venture to America was very exciting,” she said. That side of the family, the Whytes and the Campbells, settled in what became Scotland County, NC and the little community of Riverton, near Wagram on the Lumber River, one of the oldest continuous communities of cousins in America (See RivertonCousins.org). Laurinburg is its county seat.

She also visited the Isle of Gigha, about 62 miles away from Greenock, “off the west coast of Kintyre in Scotland. The island forms part of Argyll and Bute and has a population of 163 people. The climate is mild with higher than average sunshine hours and the soils are fertile. The main settlement is Ardminish.” Wikipedia. Other ancestors came from there.

She has done a lot of research on her great uncle, John Charles McNeill, who was poet laureate of North Carolina in the early 20th century and was posthumously selected for the NC Literary Hall of Fame in 1999.

Note that some of the McNeills spell their name with one l and some with two lls. But they are related, part of the same McNeil clan, meaning son of Neil.

I haven’t figured out exactly how or if we are kin, but it seems likely, based on this connection:

‘The Lovely Lady and Her Ancestral Home’ Offered Connections to Local History.