(1857-24 April 1920), photographer. Born probably in Prescott County at the place then known as the Scotch River but now known as St. Isidore, but the statement that he was born in Lochiel Township, GC, has also been found. Parents: names not known. He is said to have been orphaned at the age of two, and to have been brought up by a MacGillivray family. T. W. Munro, in his biographical sketch of McMillan in the Munro “I Remember” series of 1938 described him as “a short, stocky built man who came to Maxville from Newington 51 years ago and was this town’s first photographer.” He is said by Munro to have been “a schoolmate of Ralph Connor.” McMillan was involved in the hotel business at Newington, in Stormont County, before settling in Maxville (about 1887, if Munro’s statement and McMillan’s obituary are correct) where he spent the remainder of his life. In Maxville, he was a photographer and operated a confectionary store. As a photographer, besides doing the usual studio work in Maxville, he toured the local fairs and the like with wagon and photographic equipment. The well known Duncan Donovan was associated with him in the photographic business at one stage.

     Munro mentions that when McMillan first settled in Maxville, it was still the day of the tintypes. Added up over the years, however, presumably the bulk of his work was in regular style (i. e., post-tintype photographs). C. H. (Herb) McKillican has reported that the photograph of Allan the Dogs (Allan MacRae) on p. 596 of the MacGillivray and Ross history of Glengarry was by McMillan. Duncan McMillan is not one of the familiar figures of the GC story. Yet many of his photographs, virtually always unattributed, must have been published over the years in local histories and family histories and in newspapers, and we may suppose that he has thereby helped shape, in a quiet way, our visual perceptions of the GC past. McMillan was remembered as having organized Glengarry’s first balloon ascension. In 1915 he was reeve of Maxville. He died at his home in Maxville. He was a Methodist and an Orangeman. He was married to Grace Cass, the sister of John E. Cass. (five children) Duncan and Grace McMillan’s children included Fred, who continued his father’s photographic business in Maxville, and was still a photographer there in 1938, and Ed, who was a dentist there and at Whitby.

Glengarry News 30 April 1920 * Munro GN 4 Nov. 1938, repr. in Maxville (1967) * Maxville (1991) 83, 170, 296, 725-726 * Winter (G) 13 Oct. 1999 * private information * Fred McMillan, photographer, buys a Ford car, GN 16 Oct. 1914