(1717?-?), U E Loyalist. (various spellings of name found) He is described as having been a private in the Highland Regiment in Flanders. He emigrated to America from Perthshire, Scotland, in 1773, being presumably one of the passengers on the Pearl. In the American Revolution he took the loyal side and served in the King's Royal Regiment of New York with the rank of sergeant. After the war he settled in Charlottenburgh Township, GC, with his wife Mary McDonell, the daughter of Ranald McDonell of Lundy. Donald McGillis was the father of Captain Donald McGillis (1758-30 Nov.1843), who was also a U E Loyalist settler in GC, and of the fur traders Angus McGillis and Hugh McGillis, and was the grandfather of the fur trader Donald McGillis, who was one of the travellers on the Tonquin, and of John McGillis the surveyor and of John McGillis the second laird of Williamstown. Donald McGillis, the subject of the present sketch, is also reported to have had, among his 7 sons, one (Gillis) who was never heard of after he was taken by a press gang in New York during the Revolutionary War, and another (Ranald or Ronald) who settled in Georgia and was on the rebel side in the Revolution. He also had a son John who settled near him on the River Raisin. When the historian W. S. Wallace was preparing the lives of the McGillis fur traders for his dictionary of lives of the Nor’Westers, he was given assistance by F. D. McLennan of Cornwall, who was related to this McGillis family. McLennan wrote in 1933 that Donald McGillis was buried in Charlottenburgh Township “in a burying-ground now long abandoned,” and that because he had a thigh broken in a military engagement in Flanders, it was thought that the remains could be recognized from the injury if an attempt were ever made to remove them to another cemetery. As is the case with so many of the GC Loyalists, relatively little is known about this Donald McGillis, other than his kinship connections. There were at least two other Donald McGillises among the U E Loyalists, one of them (as mentioned) being his son.

Wallace 468-469 * family history in life of John McGillis, land surveyor, OLS No. 50 (1935) 94-95 * Pringle 404-405 (McNiff’s map of 1786) * UE List 223-224 * Reid 200 * Fryer & Smy 29 * Cruikshank King's Royal Regiment of New York 236 * Second Report, Part II, 1087 * Clarence A. Kipling’s McGillis genealogy in Charles Denney Collection, Glenbow Archives, Calgary * obituary of his son Capt. Donald McGillis: Reid, DN, 288, from British Colonist (Toronto) 19 Dec. 1843 * F. D. McLennan to W. S. Wallace, 14 June 1933, W. S. Wallace Papers, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto