For the sake of others reading this, I felt I should straighten out a mistake in this posting. One line of McKeithans DID arrive in the Cape Fear area with the Argyll colony in 1739 - Donald McKeithan's family. But Gilbert McKeithan doesn't descend from Donald. Instead he descends from Dougald McKeithan who was first found in SC in the 1720's. There is no record of when/how/where he arrived. Many of the early SC settlers came in through Barbados. Others moved south from northern colonies (Maine, Mass, etc).

Dougald and Donald did not arrive together, but it is very likely that they were related. When Dougald died, Donald advertised his estate lands in SC for sale. Donald's son also named Dougald held land in SC at his death that was probably some of this estate land. Gilbert McKeithan, apparently the grandson of Dougald of SC, was in Wilmington with Donald's son Alexander McKeithan a few years after Dougald's death and quite possibly was raised by the NC McKeithans after the deaths of his father and grandfather who died at almost the same time.

I have discovered records for the family of a John McKechan and wife Margaret Spence of Rothesay, Bute, Scotland. These records include the birth and christening records of sons Dougald and Donald in the 1690's. The names/time/place are right, but we need more to make a solid connection.

I have compiled the records I have for both of these early McKeithan families (including scans of some originals) and uploaded them to http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~fcharper/mckupdate.... I hope this will be helpful to others.

The point is that Gilbert's ancestors did not arrive in Cape Fear with Donald McKeithan in 1739. Gilbert's ancestors were in SC about 15 years earlier. Possibly they arrived at Charleston, but even that can't be proven.