(born 1817-1819; died 1830-1832; is said to have been 13 years and 10 months old at his death), subject of novel. Born at Breadalbane, GC. Parents: the Rev. William McKillican and his wife Christian or Christina McNaughtan. Daniel McKillican, a profoundly religious child, died, after a long and horrifying struggle with illness, at Breadalbane. He is presumably buried in the Breadalbane Cemetery, but there is no memorial. His life is described in the Rev. James Drummond’s A Forest Flower or a Memorial of Daniel M’Killican, Who Died in the 14th Year of His Age (74 pages; published at Philadelphia, probably in the early 1850s; it includes two illustr., both showing Daniel, and one of them including unnamed members of his family). This tribute is a religious tract, a biography, and a novel, and as a novel it is first in the remarkable succession of Glengarry novels about pioneer life. (See also Drummond this dictionary for the Edinburgh edition of the novel) Apart from the novel, and the following statement, virtually nothing is known about Daniel. Interviewed in 1894, Daniel’s brother William is quoted as saying, “You want to know of my little brother Danny, the ‘Forest Flower’ Mr. Drummond wrote of? That book never did him justice. How could it? He died in ‘32, and the book was written in ‘48. [both dates, sic] Mr. Drummond only knew of him from the account of neighbours and they in their uncultivated tongues could not do him justice. He took hip disease after scarlet fever, and suffered terribly. But he was a great student and had a very cultivated mind and language compared with those around him.” (Witness, 4 Sept. 1894) Daniel was the brother of the Rev. John McNaughton McKillican.

Entry this dictionary for Rev. James Drummond and the sources named there * Mackilligin 58-59 * MacGillivray & Ross 73-77, 81, 94, 653, 665, 684-685 * MacMillan, Kirk, 207 * entry for G. C. McKillican for family relationships