Alexander Mackenzie

Sir Alexander Mackenzie (Gaelic: Alasdair MacCoinnich) ( – 12 March 1820) was a Scottish explorer and fur trader known for accomplishing the first crossing of North America in 1793. The Mackenzie River and Mount Sir Alexander are named after him. Early life Mackenzie was born in House in Stornoway in Lewis. He was the third of the four children born to Kenneth 'Corc' Mackenzie (1731–1780) and his wife Isabella MacIver, from another prominent mercantile family in Stornoway. When only 14 years old, Mackenzie's father served as an ensign to protect Stornoway during the Jacobite rising of 1745. He later became a merchant and held the tack of Melbost; his grandfather being a younger brother of Murdoch Mackenzie, 6th Laird of Fairburn. Educated at the same school as Colin Mackenzie, the army officer and first Surveyor General of India, he sailed to New York City with his father to join an uncle, John Mackenzie, in 1774, after his mother died in Scotland. In 1776, during the American War of Independence, his father and uncle resumed their military duties and joined the King's Royal Regiment of New York as lieutenants. By 1778, for his safety as a son of loyalists, young Mackenzie was sent, or went accompanied by two aunts, to Montreal. By 1779 (a year before his father's death at Carleton Island), Mackenzie had a secured apprenticeship with Finlay, Gregory & Co., one of the most influential fur trading companies in Montreal, which was later administered by Archibald Norman McLeod. In 1787, the company merged with the North West Company.