Notes (updated Aug 2014): It is my own belief—and I have no proof—that this Daniel McNeill, as a lesser brother of Hector McNeill of Taynish who was chief of the Southern Clan of McNeills, left Argyll in 1739 and brought with him his two younger brothers, Neill and Archibald McNeill. Evidence of late has shown that Neill McNeill of Tranthams Creek is likely one of those brothers and "Scribbling Archie" was perhaps the other. This is a bold statement but I'm willing to stand by it after all the research I've done and evidence I've found.
     Of the most notable of the descendants of Daniel McNeill of Taynish is the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. In correspondence with someone who inquired of his Scottish ancestry, Whistler stated his mother, Anna (the subject of his painting "Whistler's Mother"), was descended from the McNeills of Barra: "Our MacNeills are those of Bar[r]a—the Highland McNeills….though I fear I have rather neglected my cousinships, having lived so much away from my own people."¹ To which McNeill family branch he refers here is unknown. He may have been referring to Daniel of Taynish, or to Daniel's daughter's husband, William McNeill who was Whistler's great-grandfather. Whistler's mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, was born in 1804 in Wilmington, NC. According to notes in the collection of Miss Betty Capo of Wilmington, NC, the plantation, Oak Forest, associated with Anna's family in Bladen County may have been the homestead that was identified in records by Wanda Campbell as having been on Trestle Road near Clarkton.
    Daniel's first wife's name is unknown; however, they had one child, Margaret, who bore a daughter in 1759 by her husband Rev. Mowat. If a typical woman of this time married at 15 she had a 25-year window in which to bear children. Jean, Daniel's daughter by his second wife, was born in 1730 according to her 1803 obituary. The math places Margaret's birth, perhaps Daniel's first child, at least around 1725.
    Daniel's children by Margaret McTavish are found in a genealogical chart in the McAlester family collection at the North Carolina Department of Archives and History in Raleigh, NC (which was drawn up by one of the staff genealogists there) and in the article entitled "The McNeill Family" by Everett McNeill Kivette from his "The McNeill's Ferry Chronicles and Campbell University." Kivette's genealogical record of the McNeill family is the most comprehensive—and logical—of all the accounts of the descendants of "Black Neill" McNeill and Daniel McNeill of Taynish. The Bladen County tax list of 1770 shows a Daniel McNeill with over £1500 taxable. It is generally accepted he lived until 1774 but I have found no record showing he was alive that year.
    Daniel McNeill's plantation on the Cape Fear River, "Tweedside" (or 'Tweeside', depending on the document), was sold in pieces by Daniel McNeill to three parties: James Rutherford whose brothers inherited it along with the dwelling and outbuildings; 147 acres was bought by Col. Thomas Armstrong; and 150 acres of it was bought by Duncan Campbell who moved to Bladen by 1768 (see Associated Grant/Deeds in the link just above). The Rutherford brothers eventually sold their portion to an Archibald Simpson who married a Rutherford widow— Daniel McNeill's granddaughter Jean Rutherford, born Jean Dubois. After Simpson died, Jean married a third time to Duncan McAuslan of Cumberland Co. they lived at Tweedside until they sold it in 1804. Duncan Campbell gave his section of it to his grandson, John Campbell of Campbells Bridge at Drowning Creek in Robeson County. John Campbell sold it to Stephen Gilmore in 1800.
    It is broadly claimed that "Scribbling Archie" McNeill was one of the sons of Daniel McNeill of Taynish by his first wife. I have found this questionable because that would have given Daniel two sons named Archibald, as Daniel had a son Dr. Archibald McNeill who lived and died in Dorchester County, SC, per his 1772 will in that county. Daniel and his first wife were not childless. One child, Margaret who married Rev. Mr. Mowat of Gigha, was listed in Dr. Archibald's will in SC as a "half-sister." Adding to confusion, Ian Roderick Macneill, the 45th Chief of the Clan Mcneil, did not show a first wife for Daniel at all but listed only Margaret McTavish as his wife.
    Hamilton McMillan of Robeson County wrote in an article he submitted to the Fayetteville Observer that he had been shown personally the graves of Col. John Slingsby and his wife Isabella McNeill McAlester Slingsby (Daniel's daughter) at Slingsby Shoals in Bladen County, and had no doubt that he was the only white man who knew their location. In the Bladen County tax lists of 1776, Colonel Slingsby was living next door to his sister-in-law, the widow Jane Dubois.