Alexander MacKay (fur trader)
Canadian fur trader and explorer (1770-1811)
Alexander MacKay (c. 1770 – 15 June 1811) (also spelled McKay in some records) was a Canadian fur trader and explorer who worked for the North West Company and the Pacific Fur Company. He co-founded Fort Astoria near the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific coast.
Early life
MacKay was probably born in the Mohawk Valley area of central New York, where his father Donald MacKay had brought the family after the Seven Years' War. Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War, the family departed the area and first lived in the Trois Rivières area of Lower Canada. They settled in the Glengarry region of Upper Canada about 1792.
Alexander MacKay married Marguerite Waddens or Wadin
and had one son, Thomas McKay, and three daughters: Annie Nancy McKay, Catherine McKay and Marie Wadin McKay. His natural son Alexander Ross MacKay was born by another woman.
North West Company career
MacKay was working for the North West Company (NWC) sometime before 1791. In 1792 he was transferred to Fort Fork (Peace River, Alberta) on the request of Alexander Mackenzie.
The public source identifies “Alexander MacKay (fur trader)” as canadian fur trader and explorer (1770-1811). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Alexander, MacKay and trader.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander MacKay (fur trader)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.