Ranald MacKinnon Ranald MacKinnon ( sometimes spelled " McKinnon " ) was a soldier and a civil servant of the British Empire from 1758 until his death in 1805 . As a junior officer he served with Montgomerie ' s Highlanders ( 77th Regiment of Foot ) in the French and Indian War in North America , primarily in Pennsylvania and North Carolina . During the American Revolutionary War he served as a junior officer of the Royal Highland Emigrants ( 84th Regiment of Foot ) , and also as colonel of the militia of Queens County , Nova Scotia . He was , in large part , responsible for ensuring that southwestern Nova Scotia remained loyal to the King during the Revolution . The district now known as the Municipality of Argyle was named by MacKinnon in reference to his homeland in western Scotland . French and Indian War . Ranald MacKinnon was born in the Isle of Skye in 1737 . His ancestry can be traced to Lachlan Dhu , chief of the MacKinnon clan in 1580 . On September 21 , 1758 , he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 77th Reg ' t . of Foot . He served with the 77th in several campaigns during the war , including Gen . John Forbes ' expedition against Fort Duquesne , now Pittsburgh , PA , in 1758 . He was wounded in battle against the Cherokee Nation in North Carolina in 1760 , but recovered to join the expedition to retake St . John ' s , NL from the French in 1762 . At the end of the war in 1763 he went on half - pay , and soon found a job as part of a surveying party in southwest Nova Scotia . Between the Wars . MacKinnon took a liking to an area of southwest NS known by the Mi ' qmaw people as Abuptic . With its seacoast islands and rivers it reminded him of his home in the Inner Hebrides . He applied to the Assembly of Nova Scotia for a grant of 2 , 000 acres , which was given on 1 April 1766 . MacKinnon ' s grant extended to the north of what is now called the Argyle River , including Robert ' s Island and Ste . Anne du Ruisseau . MacKinnon chose to call this area Argyle , after his native home . On 20 November 1766 , he married Letitia Piggot , the daughter of a British Army officer , in Halifax . The couple had five sons and eight daughters over the coming years . One son , John , went on to represent the County of Shelburne in the provincial Legislature from 1820 to 1832 . MacKinnon settled on what is now called Sargent ' s Hill , just north of the Argyle River in Glenwood . During the 1760s the government of Nova Scotia encouraged New Englanders to emigrate . Many of these Planters moved to established townships , such as Yarmouth . Others chose to take up lands where townships had not been established , like Argyle . In 1763 , Jeremiah Frost and fifteen other families arrived from New England and settled on the Abuptic River , south of the lands that would be granted to MacKinnon . With the end of the French and Indian War in 1763 , the British government allowed Acadians who had been expelled from Nova Scotia in 1755 and afterwards to return if they chose to do so . Many did so choose , but as most of their former lands had been seized by New Englanders they were forced to re - settle to other areas , such as Pubnico . MacKinnon was willing to lease some of his lands to Acadians in the area of Ste . Anne du Ruisseau , much to the disgust of the New Englanders , who were prejudiced against the Acadians as Papists . In general , MacKinnon did not get along well with his Planter neighbours and they were sometimes openly hostile to him . " McKinnon was alien to them in many other ways : he was an Anglican among dissenters , a customs official among inveterate smugglers , and an aristocrat among levellers . " American Revolutionary War . News of the outbreak of war in Massachusetts , specifically the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill , arrived in Argyle in the early summer of 1775 . Most of the Argyle Planters were sympathetic to the rebellion ; the Rev . John Frost preached a sermon in which he " expressed his hopes that the British forces in America might be returned to England ' confuted and confused ' " . Jeremiah Frost , his brother , a captain of the militia and the acknowledged leader of the Planters , went so far as to erect a Liberty Pole , openly announcing that the community had broken with the Crown . Nathaniel Ricker , another officer of the militia , chopped the Liberty Pole down . Meanwhile , MacKinnon had traveled to Halifax to get support from the Council to suppress the rebellion in Argyle . The Governor in Council proposed : That Mr . McKinnon do , without loss of time , proceed to Argyle with twenty men of the recruits now raising here for the King ' s service , and be furnished with four barrels of gunpowder and ball in proportion , to be by him accounted for . MacKinnon returned to Argyle with his twenty armed men ( probably from the Royal Fencible Americans ) along with a commission as Colonel of the Militia of Queens County , which at that time stretched from Liverpool to Yarmouth . The presence of these armed men suppressed the attempted rebellion in Argyle , and essentially throughout southwest Nova Scotia . MacKinnon ' s commission also recommended him for a place as an officer in the raising Royal Highland Emigrants . He became the captain of the light infantry company of the 2nd Battalion , where he remained for the duration . In November 1776 , the light company ( along with the grenadier company ) of the 84th was sent to Windsor from Halifax for the relief of Fort Cumberland , and made a remarkable forced march of 50 miles ( 80 . 5 km ) in two days , but both companies were becalmed in the Minas Basin and had to return to Windsor . On September 4 , 1778 , MacKinnon led his company in the Raid of Cape Sable Island , surprising the crew of an American privateer , taking and burning the ship . For his aggressive action , MacKinnon was praised highly by Brigadier General Eyre Massey . In response , one of his friends , Cpt . MacDonald , wrote to Major John Small , " McKinnon was embarrassed by the praise of the General and requested it not be inserted in the record since he only did his duty . " MacKinnon and his company spent the remainder of the war on garrison duties at several points around Nova Scotia . Later years . With the arrival of the Loyalists following the war , Shelburne became the leading town in southwest Nova Scotia , and MacKinnon relocated there sometime before 1791 . According to poll tax records he had gained a civil service position as an impost and excise tax collector , and was sufficiently well - to - do to be paying ten pounds sterling per year in poll taxes . His feud with the Frost family of Argyle went on , at least in his mind . In December 1804 , a few months prior to his death , MacKinnon wrote his daughter , Penelope , out of his will , ` ` thus for her unnatural and perfidious conduct some three years back . ` ` Penelope had married a Frost . Ranald MacKinnon died 28 April 1805 , in Shelburne , at the age of 68 . Slaves . At some point after receiving his grant in 1766 , MacKinnon brought in a number of African slaves whom he had purchased , probably in North Carolina , where he had served during the French and Indian War . The number of people he held in slavery is unknown , but as the lands they worked for their sustenance was referred to as a " Slave farm " there were likely 2 - 3 families . However , there is no mention of slaves in MacKinnon ' s will ( dated 1801 ) , which leads to the conclusion that the slaves were liberated or sold sometime before that date .