(1764-12 March 1820), fur trader, explorer. Born at Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Parents: Kenneth Mackenzie and his wife Isabella Maciver. Shortly before the American Revolution began, he, his father, and his father’s two sisters emigrated to New York colony. In the Revolution, Kenneth and his brother John McKenzie took the loyal side, both serving in the King's Royal Regiment of New York. Kenneth died suddenly in 1780; otherwise, presumably, he would have been one of the UEL settlers of GC, as John was. From 1779, Alexander was employed in the fur trade, first as a clerk in a Montreal counting-house, but afterwards in the field, as an active and successful trader, with a powerful side-interest in exploration. He served with the North West Company and with other groupings, including the XY Company. In 1789, beginning at Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, he led an expedition on a journey of discovery which he hoped would yield a navigable route to the Pacific coast, but which in fact led him to the Arctic along the Mackenzie River, which is named after him. Then in 1793, leading an expedition from the Peace River west of Fort Chipewyan, he successfully reached the Pacific coast. Never before, so far as is known, had any Europeans crossed the North American continent from coast to coast north of Mexico. Alexander MacKay was his second in command of this 1793 expedition. Mackenzie described the voyages of 1789 and 1793 in one of the classics in the literature of exploration, his Voyages from Montreal… through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (London, 1801). He was knighted in 1802. He spent his last years as an estate owner in Scotland, where he was married, in 1812, to Geddes Mackenzie, a young heiress. (three children) He died suddenly at an inn near Dunkeld, Scotland.
One of the most famous of all the people associated with GC, there is no hard evidence that Mackenzie ever lived there, or even visited the county. However, given how poor the sources are from his period, he could have visited his relatives there on many occasions, and even have lived there for months without evidence coming down to the present. In fact, the probability is that he did visit there. Harkness mentions that Spanish John Macdonell met him in Cornwall. Mackenzie’s uncle Capt. John McKenzie, who has sometimes been seen as the future explorer’s guardian, was a settler in GC. Sir Alexander’s aunts Mary Mackenzie (d. 1808) and Isabella (Sybella, Bella) Mackenzie (d. 1835) are reported to have been also GC residents. Another GC resident was Sir Alexander’s sister Jane (Janet, Jenny) Mackenzie. On 20 Aug. 1794, she married Alexander Rose, both partners in the marriage being residents of Charlottenburgh Township, GC. Sir Alexander Mackenzie contributed a bell to the Presbyterian church at Williamstown. This bell, made in London, Eng., in 1806, is still in use at St. Andrew’s Church, Williamstown. Mackenzie also had a pew reserved for his use in the Williamstown church. He gave the Rev. John Bethune a copy of his Voyages. At Williamstown on 23 May 1815 his first cousin Henry McKenzie married Ann, the Rev. John Bethune’s daughter. (Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VI, 468; Montreal Gazette 29 May 1815) And the Rev. John Bethune’s son Angus Bethune, the fur trader, married the daughter of another of Sir Alexander’s first cousins, Roderick Mackenzie of Terrebonne, brother of the aforementioned Henry Mackenzie. (DCB, VII, 566) Sir Alexander Mackenzie received the patents for over 800 acres of GC land, all of it in Charlottenburgh and Kenyon Tps, and most of it land originally allotted to his father or to Capt. John McKenzie. Sir Alexander also held land in Stormont and Dundas counties.
Among the family connections, it may also be noted that Kenneth Chisholm (d. 1906), the Brampton, Ont., businessman who was MLA for Peel County 1873-1892 was a close connection, possibly a great-nephew, of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. The Lancaster-born Mrs Justenia C. Sears, as is noted in her entry in the present dictionary, was also a relative.
There is a large literature on Mackenzie, but his career is conveniently summarized in the life by W. Kaye Lamb, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, V ,537-543; the material on the Mackenzies in Wallace is still useful for persons not covered in the DCB; also the entry for Mackenzie in Hurtig is a convenient brief statement with a useful map of the two great voyages * Sir Alexander’s connections with GC: Harkness 400, 402; MacGillivray & Ross 48 ; Donald N. MacMillan’s essay Glengarry Life 1989; articles by David G. Anderson GHS Newsletter Oct. 1993 & Nov. 1995 * Mary Larratt Smith, Prologue to Norman: the Canadian Bethunes (1976) 23, [37], 65-66 * Sir Alexander’s great-grandniece, Mrs S. Kirkland Vesey, of London, Eng., visits Cornwall area, has been down Mackenzie River to its mouth, Standard Freeholder 30 Sept. 1936 * Alexandria student Claudine Nadeau participant in recreating Mackenzie’s journey to Pacific, Glengarry News 28 April 1993 * recovery of Sir Alexander’s (probable) compass case for Nor’Westers Museum, Williamstown, Ottawa Citizen 11 April 1999, GN 14 April 1999, GHS Newsletter May 1999 * Mackenzie’s gavel, believed to be of Masonic connections, GN 21 July 2004