Daniel McMillan, born c 1780, Londonderry

When you say Daniel was born in Londonderry do you mean the city or the county, or is that not known? What denomination was he, and what was his father’s occupation?

Ideally we need his approximate place of birth and denomination to have much chance of tracing him. Few churches have records for the 1700s, so this may be difficult.

Only working from Scottish census info. Gives birthplace once as Londonderry and once as Derry.

No father's occupation on death record, Daniel himself was a muslin weaver.

Expect denomination as Presbyterian as children married in Church of Scotland

I have searched Rootsireland. The only glimmer I found was the Burial Record for a John Reid Mullan, aged 81, on 5th Feb 1863. The address was given as Ballymacilcorr, Maghera, Co Derry. Denomination Presbyterian. He could be a possible brother to Daniel.

Thanks for assistance

Not all Presbyterian records are on-line on the pay to view sites like rootsireland. They porbably only have about 25% of the available Presbyterian records. And not all churches records go back to the period you need. So the picture ins patchy. The most complete sets of Presbyterian records are in PRONI (the public record office) and the Presbyterian Historical Society, both in Belfast. They are not on-line. A personal visit is required to go through them all, but there are probably 100 Presbyterian churches in Co. Derry so it’s a fair bit of work if you can’t narrow the search area in some way.

Usual advice in these circumstances is to search all Scottish sources (wills, gravestones, death notices, military records etc) in the hope that a more definite place of origin appears. Also look for families from the same area in Ireland living next door to your family in censuses. People often lived near relatives and others they knew from home. Sometimes by researching them you can trace your family.

If you think the family might ever have claimed under the Poor Law in Scotland then their records are worth searching as they usually record the parish of origin in Ireland, and often details of next of kin. If the family lived in Ayrshire, I think the Poor Law records are in Ayr County record office.

http://publicrecordsearch.co.uk/scotland/ayrshire-county-public-records/

If searching all the Presbyterian records, I’d start with those for the town of Londonderry and then move to the rural ones.  But you may need a day or so to go through them all.