[1][3] Her parents were Jessie Janet Dewar and the Reverend Daniel McNeill, a minister of the Free Kirk in Orkney.
"[11] According to the newsletter of the Orkney Family History Society, McNeill was also talented at learning foreign languages, and in literature and art.
McNeill also read out a resolution passed by the Wyoming House of Representatives, which acknowledged the many positive contributions women had made since being enfranchised in that American state.
[4] In June 1910, McNeill chaired a meeting of the Orcadian Women's Suffrage Society where Wilhelmina Lamond (later Abbott) was the guest speaker.
[5][17] Her manuscript diaries, which are in the possession of the Imperial War Museum, note that her service was in Ostrovo and Salonika, where she met Prince Alexander of Serbia, President Venizelos, Flora Sandes and King Constantine of Greece.
[18] For her service in the Balkans, McNeill was awarded the French medal Médaille des Epidémies (en vermeil) and the Serbian Order of St Sava.
[1] During this period, she also travelled in Europe with her sister Margaret, and the pair had a private audience with Pope Pius XI in 1925, and shortly after converted to Catholicism.