====== McMillan, James ====== 
 (8 Aug. 1782-26 Jan. 1858), fur trader. Born in Scotland. Parents: Allan McMillan and his wife Margaret Cameron. When a young man James came to Canada with his parents in the Lochaber Emigration of 1802. He was a fur trader first the NWC (which he joined as a clerk during his first years in Canada) and afterwards with the HBC, serving at various points in the Canadian and American West, and, towards the end of his career, in the Lake of Two Mountains district near Montreal. He accompanied David Thompson in his journey across the Rockies in 1807, and was the founder of Fort Langley, B. C. in 1827. Retired from the HBC in 1839 (in the late 1830s James had been living at Pointe-Fortune, on the Ottawa River, with his brother John), and re-settled in Scotland, he lived at Alexandria House, outside Perth. He died in Glasgow. After three marriages to “country wives,” he was married finally, in 1829, to Eleanor McKinley of Scotland. Heather Devine has traced the story of the three “country marriages” and his numerous Métis descendants. He was in GC in 1823, when he had a daughter and a son baptized at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Williamstown. He appears to have come back to the GC area at this time in connection with settling his father’s estate; David Thompson was, of course, by this time a Williamstown resident. There were no doubt other, unrecorded visits to GC, and perhaps McMillan even lived there with his parents immediately after coming to Canada.


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<fs small>Life by Gregory Thomas, //Dictionary of Canadian Biography// Vol. VIII * lives (virtually identical) Wallace & //MDict// * Heather Devine, “The Indian-Métis Connection: James McMillan and His Descendants,” in Fleming 92-101; also same volume 13, 179 * Whyte, i, 264, 301, ii, 416 * Somerled MacMillan, //The Emigration of Lochaber MacMillans to Canada in 1802// (1958) 6
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