Notes on this Family : About 1940 J.F. "Frank" McKay (my gr-grandfather) of Philadelphus, Robeson Co., told his granddaughter, my mother, that his grandfather, "Wild Archie" McNeill, told him that Wild Archie's grandfather, James McNeill, came from Scotland in 1740. Was James McNeill an Argyll Colony child, arriving in America at the age of eight?
     James and Elizabeth had nine daughters and three sons. Three daughters have been positively identified. I've long suspected Malcolm McNeill's wife Mary—her parentage unknown to the present day—was the daughter of James and Elizabeth McNeill. Mary and Malcolm named their five oldest children Barbara, Archibald, James, Daniel and Elizabeth, matching old Scots' naming patterns that reflected grandparents' names; all five of these children of Mary's were born between 1778 and '86 in roughly 2-year intervals leaving little or no room for any deceased infants to disturb the pattern. At that time no other James McNeill in the region was old enough to be the namesake of their son James. The second son of John Purcell Graham and his wife Janet McNeill was named James and the first four of their children match the old naming pattern as well. As for Anne's marriage, she was the second wife of Archibald McFayden, and as he had by his first wife a son already named for his father, he and Anne had two little boys named James because the first one died in infancy; they, too, appear to have used the naming pattern.