Alexander Mackenzie (explorer) - Early Life

Early Life

In 1764, Mackenzie was born at Luskentyre House in Stornoway on the Isle of 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 fourteen years old, Mackenzie's father served as an Ensign to protect Stornaway 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, in 1774 his mother died and he sailed to New York to join his father and an uncle, John Mackenzie. 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, to escape the ravages of war, young Mackenzie was either sent, or accompanied by two aunts, to Montreal. By 1779 (a year before his father's death at Carleton Island), Mackenzie had secured an apprenticeship with Finlay, Gregory & Co., one of the most influential fur trading companies at Montreal, which was later administered by Archibald Norman McLeod. In 1787, the company merged with the rival North West Company.