by robinoz » Sun Aug 03, 2014 3:35 am
Neil McNeill's maternal grandparents are known. Neil's mother, Margaret, was also a McNeill (christened 115/1768), the only daughter of Torquill McNeill and Margaret McMath. There were also three sons of this marriage; John (c. 19/8/1764); Alexander (c.29/6/1773); and Malcolm (c.4/7/1777). At the time of the birth of this last child in 1777, the parents were said to he living at 'Colehill'. This is later spelled 'Coalhill'- and in the west of the parish?near West Drumlemble. From mid C19th maps, it is evident that this is the site of the parish coal deposits, from where a canal had been dug in the late C l8th to transport coal to Campbeltown itself.
Coalhill is also in close proximity to two other sites where Andrew McNeill, Neil's father, was resident. At the time of his marriage to Margaret McNeill (21/5/1804), and for the births of his first three sons Alexander, (4/8/1805), John, (16/8/1807) and Neil (7/9/1809), Andrew McNeill is listed in the parish registers as a weaver at ‘Tirefergus’.(=Gaelic, "the land of Fergus "), (modern Tirfergus), was a farming settlement in the South/Western part of the Campbeltown parish. In the last quarter of the C18th, there were 3 families of McNeills who were located there; Archibald McNeill and Janet Thomson; another Archibald McNeill and Katherin Brollochan; and Hector McNeill and Finuell McCallum. All three families had children given the name Neil McNeill, and it is possible that Andrew McNeill was the son of one of these families, (Archibald McNeill and Katherin Brollochan's being the most likely, as their marriage is not recorded in the parish registers either.)
Tirfergus, of course, had a long association with the name McNeill, and Lachlan Buidhe McNeill was said by the parochial records to be at ‘Teirfergus’ when these records began in Campbeltown, at the end of the Cl7th.
At the time of the birth of Andrew and Margaret McNeill's fourth son, Hugh (b.14/6/1813), the family had moved to Kilkivan, a settlement not far removed from Tirefergus, and near the ruins of the chapel of St.Coivin or Kevin, and the resting place of Lachlan Buidhe McNeill.
The exact relationships between the families are difficult to deduce, owing to the large number of McNeills in the parish at this time?and the movement of these families to different parts of the parish. Apart from families in the township itself, McNeills were at the western settlements of Losset, Knockhantymore, Saltpans, Laggs, Knocknahall, Killounan, Bealloch, Drumlemble, and Coalhill.