I have heard people say that they believe Gilbert McKeithan descended from Donald McKeithan. I don't believe the records I have presented support that at all. Based on the records, I believe the only conclusion we can draw is that Gilbert must have been the son of Thomas McKeithan of Prince Frederick's Parish, SC.

1 - Dougald McKeithan d 1750 Bladen Co, NC (son of Donald, 1739 immigrant to Cape Fear) seems to have made a real effort to remember all his living family when he wrote his will. He named his father, brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews by each of his siblings. But he did not mention Gilbert McKeithan. When Dougald wrote his will, he was in possession of some of the estate lands of Dougald McKeithan of SC - who might have been his uncle. Even though there was certainly some connection between Donald's family in NC and Dougald's family in SC, still Gilbert wasn't mentioned in the 1750 will of Donald's son Dougald. Nieces and nephews are much closer kin than an uncle's grandson. It makes sense that Dougald would name his nieces and nephews but wouldn't name his first-cousin-once-removed in his will. It does not make sense that Dougald would have named all these other nieces and nephews but left out one nephew. If Gilbert was not one of Dougald's nephews, then he was not one of Donald's grandchildren. None of Donald's grandchildren were old enough to have been Gilbert's father. This alone would eliminate Gilbert as a descendant of Donald.

2 - Gilbert married and lived in Prince Frederick's Parish, SC prior to moving to Bladen Co, NC. His wife Sarah Milliken grew up near the Black River within a short distance of the Dougald McKeithan land. Gilbert McKeithan, Dougald McKeithan of SC, his son Thomas McKeithan, and the Moses Milliken family were all clearly associated with the Black/Black Mingo area of Prince Frederick's Parish.

3 - Dougald McKeithan must have had a larger family than just himself and his son Thomas. On 5 April 1739, he petitioned for 550 acres "having Sworn to his family Right". Unfortunately, the record didn't state how many people were in his family. On 7 April 1752, James McRee petitioned for 500 acres based on himself, his wife, two children plus six Negroes. The number of acres allowed depended on the number of people the petitioner was claiming, so it would appear that Dougald's family was larger than James McRee's family. Dougald was petitioning for more land, and there is no mention of Negroes. If we allow for just one more person, Dougald's family must have consisted of at least five people in 1739. We might expect them to be Dougald, Thomas, Thomas's wife, and two others, most likely Thomas's children. Or perhaps one of these people might have been Dougald's wife, but I suspect she had died since Dougald had no children other than Thomas. There was no mention of a wife in the records concerning the slaves who were executed. But even if Dougald had remarried and Thomas's wife was still living, that would only account for only 4 people. There must have been at least one child.

Deborah Thomson was born 3 January 1724/5 (1724 old style,1725 new style).  If Gilbert had just come of age when he witnessed the New Hanover Co deed in 1753, he would have been born about 1733, certainly well before 1739 when Dougald petitioned for land. We know Gilbert's wife Sarah Milliken was born in 1736 which works well with Gilbert's estimated birth date of 1733. Deborah Thomson would only have been 9 years old in 1733, so she could not have been Gilbert's mother. She would have been only 14 years old by 5 April 1739 when Dougald petitioned for land, and probably had not married Thomas McKeithan at that time either. Sometimes young girls did marry as young as age 14, but I don't think that was the case here. I doubt that Thomas and Deborah married until shortly before Thomas's death. When James McRee petitioned for land in 1752, he had two children. We know Deborah had married McRee by 1750, perhaps as early as 1747. She was still Deborah McKeithan on 27 Mar 1747 when her father, John Thomson, wrote his will. These two children in McRee's family in 1752 were probably McRee's own children. If McRee was raising McKeithan stepchildren in his home as well, it certainly would have been to his advantage to count them too when he petitioned for land. If Deborah had produced McKeithan children, you would expect to see McRee claiming more children than he and Deborah could have had during the 2-5 years they had been married. It does not appear that Deborah produced any McKeithan children, or if she did, they don't seem to have survived. For this reason, I don't believe Deborah married Thomas McKeithan until after 1739 and probably not until shortly before Thomas's death.

Dougald's home contained six rooms. The description of this home in the SC Gazette advertisement does not sound like a home that was built to house just Dougald and Thomas. Considering all this, I believe Thomas must have must have had another wife prior to Deborah, and by this wife he had at least one child by 1739, and possibly more than one. Again, this points to Gilbert.

4 - Although Gilbert was later associated with the Donald McKeithan family of NC, there are good reasons for this. Gilbert was still a young boy when his father and grandfather died, maybe 12 or 13 years old. Since Thomas McKeithan was the only child of Dougald McKeithan, there were no McKeithan aunts or uncles in SC to take and raise Gilbert. Deborah Thomson could not have been Gilbert's mother, so his mother must have died years before. Gilbert's closest remaining McKeithan kin seem to have been Donald's family in NC. We know Donald must have been involved in whatever had to be done following Dougald's death because of the advertisement he placed in the SC Gazette to sell Dougald's land. Most likely Gilbert went to live with Donald's son Alexander or perhaps with Donald himself. We do know that Gilbert witnessed a deed in New Hanover Co for Alexander McKeithan in 1753 when Gilbert was probably just coming of age. At this time, Donald's records associated him with both Old Brunswick and Wilmington. Gilbert probably would have been familiar with both towns. At the same time, Donald was acquiring land in Bladen Co where his son Duncan was already living. Surely Gilbert would have at least visited occasionally in Bladen Co and would have come to know Duncan's family there. Donald's son Alexander eventually moved to Bladen Co too. This is probably why Gilbert moved to Bladen Co when he left SC - to be near these McKeithans who were his only remaining family.

5 - We know that the first wife of Alexander McKeithan (Gilbert's son) was buried in the graveyard at St Philip's Church in Old Brunswick, even though the church was in ruins and the town had been abandoned. Although Clara Clarissa Mitchell Woodward couldn't find her grandmother's grave that her mother had shown her years before, Clara did show her granddaughters the graves of other ancestors buried at St Philip's. Donald lived in Old Brunswick when he first arrived in Cape Fear. It's quite possible that early McKeithans were buried at St Philip's, and the family continued to bury their dead at St Philip's for many years to come. Clara's granddaughters had been told about the inhabitants of Old Brunswick leaving, and that their family moved to SC. That is consistent with Donald leaving old Old Brunswick to move to Wilmington, and then Gilbert moving from NC to SC. There must have been a reason for Gilbert to leave the McKeithans of NC to move to SC. Most likely it was the remaining land in NC that apparently had never been sold. As a son of Thomas McKeithan, Gilbert would have been the only heir to that land.

6 - The names Moses and Alexander were very strong names in Gilbert's descendants. Gilbert named two of his sons Moses and Alexander, and each of them named sons Moses and Alexander. The name Moses obviously came from Moses Milliken. I suspect the name Alexander was for Donald's son Alexander. This is another reason I believe Gilbert went to live with Alexander and/or Donald after his own father and grandfather died. There is no doubt that Gilbert was with Alexander in Wilmington in 1753.