McArthur, Neil

fl. 1764–84

Neil McArthur, Loyalist leader during the American Revolution, moved from his native Scotland to Cross Creek in 1764 and opened a store. When the war began he was a prosperous merchant and planter, owning two plantations and six uncultivated tracts in Cumberland and Bladen counties and wagons and boats for hire. He supplied provisions, camp equipment, and boats to the Loyalists at Moore's Creek Bridge and fought there as a captain. He was imprisoned with other Loyalist leaders for almost three years afterwards. In April 1779, on his way from New York to Georgia, he was captured off the coast of Virginia and confined at Boston for four months. Freed again, he rejoined the British at New York and accompanied Sir Henry Clinton to Charles Town in 1780.

Under Lord Charles Cornwallis's commission McArthur raised the reactivated North Carolina Highlanders, and in 1782 he joined that corps to John Hamilton's Royal North Carolina Regiment. McArthur accompanied the regiment to East Florida in 1782 and to Nova Scotia in 1783. When he moved to Nova Scotia, there were six people in his household. He received one thousand acres at the regimental settlement near Country Harbour and seven hundred acres on Swan Creek in Kings County. McArthur and his family left Nova Scotia in March 1784 to present his compensation claim in London. There he was allowed £2,345 of his £4,056.18 claim.