Notes: Almost nothing is known of this couple who are well known to many McNeill genealogists of this part of the Cape Fear, professional and amateur alike. I have seen all sorts of claims that a number of men of the Argyll Colony are descended from them, e.g., "Black Neill" McNeill, "Bluff Hector" McNeill, and even "Scribbling Archie" McNeill. This is wrong. The ONLY man known to be a son of this couple was named Hector and that fact resides in a letter in the McAlester collection at the Dept. of Archives and History in Raleigh, NC. The letter, dated about 1737 from Hector McAlester in Scotland to his brother Alexander in Bladen County, specifically asks about a son of Laughlin and Margaret Johnstone MccNeill named Hector who remained in Bladen the year before; the letter actually states he was a son of Laughlin McNeill and Margaret Johnstone. Presumably, in adding exactly who his parents were, there was another Hector McNeill in the colony. It is my belief that the Hector left the year before was "Hector Carver" McNeill because the only other Hector McNeill of substance within the Argyll Colony was "Bluff Hector" and he was most definitely the son of "Black Neill" McNeill and Elizabeth Campbell.
    My own supposition about this couple's brood is below. I have long suspected that "Hector Carver" McNeill and Turquill McNeill were brothers and have come to believe James McNeill was not a son of this couple. There is a Laughlin who sticks out in the records of Cumberland County who had a son named Hector; this Laughlin died in 1770. Some have tried to posit that he was the father Laughlin whose wife was Margaret Johnstone. I don't discount the notion that "Scribbling Archie" was the son of Laughlin and Margaret; he did have a son named Laughlin who I believe was his oldest son.