(22 June 1909-21 June 1977), clergyman, historian. Born at Kinglassie, Scotland. He was christened Samuel but adopted Somerled as the Scottish equivalent by deed poll on 15 Jan. 1957. Parents: Samuel McMillan, who was a coal miner and linoleum worker, and his wife Elizabeth Laurie. Somerled MacMillan attended the Bible Training Institute of the Glasgow Evangelistic Association. After a short period with the Baptist Church, he entered the service of the United Free Church of Scotland. With that church, being first a Home Area Missionary and then a minister of full status, he served in the combined missionary charge of Ballachulish and Kinlochleven, and then in Glasgow, Fort William, Paisley, and Glasgow again. After his health began to fail, he retired to Cumbernauld. He died in Cumbernauld, and is buried at Crieff. At Perth, Scotland, on 22 June 1940 he was married to Janet Strachan McRae (1911-1987), a state registered nurse. (two children)
Somerled MacMillan had the title of bard and historian of the Clan MacMillan. He was editor of the Clan MacMillan Magazine, based at Paisley, Scotland. There is material on Glengarry history in his The Emigration of Lochaber MacMillans to Canada in 1802 (1958) and his Bygone Lochaber Historical and Traditional (1971). He visited GC at least twice for research, staying on one of these occasions at the home of Hugh P. MacMillan, who was later to be the well-known researcher and archivist, and who was at that time living in GC. Somerled MacMillan was one of the speakers at the unveiling of the McMillan plaque at Williamstown in 1962. In his 1960 visit to GC, he spoke with Fr Ewen Macdonald and others. (Glengarry News 4 Aug. 1960) He seems to have been exceptionally well remembered in the small but highly active community of GC researchers, and was unusual in being a resident of Scotland who was interested in GC history. It is hard to be certain how much research he did, and how deeply it reached, but it seems substantially true that he was one of the first persons not a Glengarrian (in the Canadian sense of a GC native or resident) to make serious inquiries into the background in Scotland of the people who settled the Canadian Glengarry in the years 1784-1820. He was not a native Gaelic speaker, but he studied the language and gained some reputation as an expert.
Private information * Bibliography of Glengarry: index * typescript text of funeral tribute by Rev. E. Watson, in present author’s collection * MacMillan: Compiled by Glengarry and District Branch of Clan MacMillan Society, two booklets (1977?-1979), booklet I, p. 2 (obituary tribute and portrait; evidence of the impression he made in GC) * Fleming: index, group portrait 67 * remembered by Rev. Donald MacMillan, Glengarry Highland Games programme 1999.