Notes on this Family : The most notable of the descendant 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. Or, perhaps he was even referring to Daniel's unknown first wife's family. Whistler's mother, Anna Matilda McNeill, was born in 1804 in Wilmington, NC. According to notes shared by Everett McNeill Kivett 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 and the children by her are largely unknown, though Daniel's son Dr. Archibald McNeill of Dorchester Co., SC named his half-sister Margaret Mowat in his will of 1772. The 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 (drawn up by a staff genealogist 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 and there is a tax record in Bladen County showing that he was taxed on a horse in 1774.
   Daniel McNeill's plantation on the Cape Fear River, "Tweedside" (sometimes "Tweeside"), was sold in pieces by Daniel McNeill to three parties: James Rutherford whose brothers inherited it along with the dwelling and outbuildings; 147 acres bought by Col. Thomas Armstrong; and 150 acres bought by Duncan Campbell who moved to Bladen by 1768 (see Associated Grant/Deeds above). The Rutherford brothers eventually sold their portion to an Archibald Simpson who married a Rutherford widow (Daniel's granddaughter Jean), and Duncan Campbell gave his parcel of it to his grandson, John Campbell of Campbells Bridge at Drowning Creek in Robeson County. John Campbell sold it to Stephen Gilmore of Cumberland 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 very questionable because that would have given Daniel two sons named Archibald, as Daniel already had a son Dr. Archibald McNeill who lived and died in Dorchester Co., SC, per his 1772 will. It is also doubtful because Daniel's and Scribbling Archie's birthyears appear to be too close together (ca. 1705 and ca. 1720 respectively) to have been father and son. Perhaps they were brothers. There is no complete list of any of the children of Daniel and his first wife; but they 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 the 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 (a founder of Pembroke College in Robeson County) wrote in an article he submitted to the Fayetteville Observer that he personally had been shown by a local the graves of Col. John Slingsby and his wife Isabella McNeill McAlester Slingsby (Daniel's daughter), and a son Robert Slingsby, 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. Jane had fled Wilmington around 1775.