====== McKay, Thomas ====== (1798?-1850), fur trader. Parents: Alexander MacKay and his country wife Marguerite Waddens, who was part Indian and was also half-sister to the wife of the Rev. John Bethune. Born in Indian country. He was baptized at the Presbyterian Church, Williamstown, GC, on 9 Nov. 1804, being then aged six. He seems to have lived in GC for several years at this time, perhaps in the household of his grandfather Donald McKay, or with other McKay relatives, and possibly in the household of the Rev. John Bethune. His education was, presumably, in GC. Accompanying his father, he was on the voyage of the //Tonquin //from New York to the mouth of the Columbia River, 1810-1811. (see //Tonquin//, in Glossary) Young Thomas McKay left the //Tonquin// at the mouth of the Columbia River, where he was assigned to the work party that built the Astoria trading post, and so he avoided the fate of his father, killed in the //Tonquin// massacre of June 1811. In a long and colourful career, Thomas McKay served successively with the Pacific Fur Company, the NWC and the HBC, ranging widely throught the forests, mountains and plains of western North America. A fierce, resourceful man whose projects did not always work out well, he never rose above the level of clerk, partly because he had won the dislike and distrust of Governor George Simpson of the HBC. In later years Thomas McKay farmed in northern Oregon. He had, successively, a Chinook wife and a Nez Perce wife, and was married afterwards, in a religious ceremony in 1838, to Isabelle Montour, who like himself was part Indian. He died in Oregon at the Scappoose Plains, north of Portland. ---- He does not have a life in the //Dictionary of Canadian Biography// , but there is a detailed and important life of him by David Lavender, in LeRoy R. Hafen, ed., //The Mountain Men and the Fur Trade of the Far West// (1965-1969), VI, 259-277 * his life in Wallace and //MDict// * David G. Anderson, “Indian Wives of the Glengarry Nor’Westers,” //Glengarry Life// 1993 * life of his father by Jean Morrison in //DCB// Vol. V * //Bibliography of Glengarry//: index, for Alexander and Thomas MacKay, and //Tonquin// [<6>]