Alfred Ross McMillan

Lucile McMillan’s father: the “pharmacist” of family memory, and with his elder brother Everett the owner of McMillan Bros., druggists, of Tacoma, from about 1905. Born at Park Rapids, Minnesota, in 1884, in Washington Territory by 1887 and at Tacoma by 1900; married Florence Frost at Spokane in 1904, at twenty.

The firm’s story, from the Tacoma Times (record): a store in the Fidelity Building, 949 C Street, by 1909; a second at Thirteenth and C, “the prettiest drug store in Tacoma,” opened in December 1910 with a soda fountain; a store at Kapowsin bought in 1912; free motorcycle delivery in 1915; a third store, at 1111 Broadway, bought in March 1915, “the brothers, E. E. and A. R.” having been “in business here 10 years.” In 1917 a balcony phonograph department, and in 1925 a music department of pianos, Brunswick phonographs and music rolls on the mezzanine (source). The firm was still trading in 1942.

“Alfred McMillan (‘Doc’),” as a 1915 column has him, played golf at Lakeside and was vice-president of the new Meadow Park Golf Club, and was a director of the Tacoma Speedway Association. On 1 October 1917, after Washington’s prohibition law, police raided the store at 1111 Broadway and seized 157 quarts of whisky, 18 of gin and a barrel of alcohol. He defended himself: the trial was put off once because he was duck hunting on the La Conner flats (“Whether McMillan got any ducks it did not say”), and he testified that 120 quarts had arrived an hour before the raid to fill two weeks of prescriptions for the two stores. The jury could not agree, and in January 1918 the case was dropped.

No pharmacist’s license has been found for either brother; the papers call him “druggist” and “proprietor.” In 1930 a two-year-old “Alice McMillan” is listed in the household as a daughter; who she was is not known. He registered for the 1942 draft at Tacoma and died there in 1966.

In the censuses: Tacoma, 1910 Ward 8 (record) and 1920 (record).

Open questions

• When McMillan Bros. was founded and when it closed (Tacoma directories, 1904-1950); whether either brother was a registered pharmacist.
• Who “Alice,” b. about 1928, was; his and Florence’s obituaries; the meaning of “Ross.”