William McMillan (congressman)

American politician

William McMillan (March 2, 1764 – May, 1804) was a lawyer, Judge, County Commissioner, and Delegate to the 6th United States Congress from the Northwest Territory. He was among the first settlers of what would become Cincinnati, Ohio.

He was born on March 2, 1764, near Abingdon, Washington County, Virginia, the second of nine children. efn|Alexander and William McMillan were both at Abingdon, Virginia. They both fought at Kings Mountain, and they both moved to Knox County, Tennessee. William, though, is consistently reported as Lawyer, Judge and Congressman William McMillan's father. William and Mary Leeper had a son in law named Alexander McMillian, who married their daughter Martha McMillan. She is said to have married her first cousin. He studied higher philosophy and exact sciences at College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1775. The first in his class, he graduated during the Revolutionary War. McMillan graduated from Mount Zion College, Winnsboro, South Carolina, in November 1787. He read about John Cleves Symmes’s Trenton Prospectus about the Northwest Territory and decided to purchase a lot between the Little and Great Miami Rivers. That year, McMillan received life long injuries after four soldiers burst into his cabin on Front Street. He beat all four men from Fort Washington who were mad that McMillan had been made judge. McMillan began to practice law in 1789. With Ludlow, Governor Arthur St. Clair, and Jonathan Dayton, he planned the town of Dayton, Ohio, in 1795. McMillan served with Captain Robert Benham as Hamilton County Commissioners before both were elected to the Territorial House of Representatives in 1799 and 1800. He was elected to the Sixth Congress He served from November 24, 1800, to March 3, 1801. efn|Some sources state that his property was in Avondale, A monument was installed with a plaque honoring McMillan by the Masonic Lodge. McMillan Street in Cincinnati is named for him.