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This is a not-so-common photo of one of Kenya’s earliest settlers - Lord William Northrup McMillan (1872-1925).
Contrary to what many scholars of Kenya’s history would expect, McMillan was not British. He was a wealthy American from St. Louis.
He invested in a huge ranch that stretched towards Ol Donyo Sabuk mountain (Mt. Kilimambogo). Juja Farm, he called it.
It was at this farm where he played host to retired U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909 for some big game hunting. McMillan and his wife also established one of modern Nairobi’s earliest landmarks, the McMillan Library.
Immensely rich, McMillan ordered a farmhouse of steel and asbestos and had it shipped to Nairobi from England in parts.
By 1908, Juja Farm had electric lights, a telephone, an ice-making plant and bungalows for farm workers. In the farmhouse itself, there were luxurious teakwood chairs, a huge telescope for watching game and, yes, even running water.
McMillan spent close to £60,000 developing this place. His wife, Lucie, wasn’t happy about the way he was incurring expenses in a remote part of the world. Perhaps partly to appease her, McMillan bought Lucie a stone house in present-day Chiromo from Ewart Grogan.
When McMillan came to Kenya, he was tall and muscular. By 1910, the year when his guest Roosevelt returned to America, McMillan’s weight had increased considerably. He was so big that he was known to be the ‘fat mzungu who spits sideways’ or ‘mûkora’ (rogue), as the local Agîkûyû called him.
In the early 1920s, McMillan developed pleurisy and heart trouble. He died in Nice, France, in 1925. His body was returned to Kenya to be buried at a spot that he himself had chosen - at the top of Ol Donyo Sabuk.
Carrying his coffin up the mountain proved to be a problem. But when he was finally laid to rest, his spirit could savour magnificent views of the vast plains below, and the Ithanga hills beyond.
The McMillans were benevolent and generous. They are the ones that also funded the construction of YMCA in 1911. Moreover, their Chiromo and Juja Farm houses served as hospitals for troops injured during WWI.
Owing to his partly Canadian roots, McMillan was knighted by England’s King George V for his philanthropy.