Southern Anthology

Families on the Frontiers of the Old South

First Name Last Name
Home Search Login  
Share Print Bookmark
Alexander McGillivray

Alexander McGillivray

Male 1750 - 1793  (42 years)

Personal Information    |    Media    |    Sources    |    All    |    PDF

  • Name Alexander McGillivray 
    Alexander McGillivray    		 Alexander McGillivray
    Born 15 Dec 1750  Wetumpka, Elmore, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location  [1] 
    • Present-day locations are given. McGillivray was born at the Coushatta village of Little Tallassee on the Coosa River.
    Gender Male 
    Birth 1759  Tallassee, Upper Creek Nation Find all individuals with events at this location  [2] 
    Political 08 May 1781  Pensacola, Escambia, Florida Find all individuals with events at this location  [3] 
    Bernardo de Gálvez retakes Pensacola from the British, inaugurating the third Spanish period (1781-1821). McGillivray buys lots in the city of Pensacola (near Washerwoman's Bayou or present-day Spring Street) which would provide the headquarters for Panton, Leslie & Company. 
    Political 1783  Tensaw, Baldwin, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location  [4] 
    Present-day location. McGillivray establishes Tensaw as a link for the Creek Nation to Spanish West Florida 
    Political Nov 1783  Augusta, Richmond, Georgia Find all individuals with events at this location  [5, 6, 7] 
    Treaty of Augusta is concluded with some Creek chiefs, including rival Hiboithle Mico, that ceded the territory between the Ogeechee and Oconee Rivers. McGillivray is absent. Washington and Franklin Counties are created. 
    Occupation 1784  Mobile, Mobile, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location  [8] 
    Partner, Mather and Company. This firm maintained the European trade with the Choctaw and Chickasaw. 
    Occupation 1784 - 1788  Pensacola, Escambia, Florida Find all individuals with events at this location  [9] 
    Partner, Panton, Leslie & Company. This firm maintained European trade in the Creek Nation and McGillivray's ability to license white traders in the nation gave him considerable leverage over village chiefs and, consequently, the Spanish. His position was reduced to that of a silent partner as Spanish suspicions grew that he had gone over to the British-- rumors were circulated in Pensacola that he had made common cause with adventurer, William Augustus Bowles (1763-1805)-- and then the Americans.  
    Political 07 Aug 1790  New York, New York, New York Find all individuals with events at this location  [10] 
    Treaty of New York is concluded wherein significant Creek territory in Georgia is ceded to the United States. McGillivray secretly receives an annuity and a Brigadier's commission 
    Died 17 Feb 1793  Pensacola, Escambia, Florida Find all individuals with events at this location  [12] 
    • Abram Mordecai, a contemporary of McGillivray, told Albert Pickett years later that McGillivray had been poisoned by the Spanish. (Pickett does not repeat the claim in his book, however.) Amos Wright points to two letters by Spanish colonial officials that seem to support this contention. The first is from Governor Carondelet to McGillivray himself, dated 14 Dec 1792. In it he offers to send a powder which he thinks will ease McGillivray's "Rheumatism" but only on the rather odd condition that the prescription is "not displayed to any physician." The second is from Pensacola Commandant, Arthur O'Neill, to Carondelet about 2 weeks prior to McGillivray's death. In it, he claims "[t]hey are now free from McGillivray's policies." Others also carried premature news of McGillivry's death. On 6 Feb 1793, Cherokee Chief John Watts told Southwest Territory Governor Blount that the Creek Chief was dead. Wright speculates mercury vapor poisoning likely contributed to McGillivray's demise. [11]
    Buried Escambia County Courthouse, Pensacola, Escambia, Florida / Choctaw Bluff, Clarke, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location  [13, 14] 
    • Present day location and original burial site. (Wright erroneously reports this as the Santa Rosa County Courthouse.) According to Pickett, McGillivray was buried in his benefactor's garden. He was reburied at Choctaw Bluff, Clarke County, Alabama. Lower Creek Chief Timothy Bernard penned these words, 26 March 1793: "He was interred in Mr. Panton's garden, as the Dons would not admit his being laid in their burying ground." This would, no doubt, be St. Michael's cemetery. In one of the many ironies afforded by time, James Tunstall Bryars (the forth great grand-nephew of McGillivray) married Maggie Moreno (great grand-daughter of don Francisco Moreno, the last Spanish Consul in Pensacola).
    Person ID I5051  Dickinson
    Last Modified 24 Sep 2012 

    Father Lachlan Lia McGillivray,   b. 1719, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 1799, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 80 years) 
    Mother Sehoy II Marchand 
    Family ID F1355  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Elsie Moniac,   d. 1794, Baldwin County, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Children 
    +1. Margaret McGillivray,   b. Abt 1782, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. Abt 1825, Alabama Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 43 years)
     2. Alexander McGillivray,   d. Jul 1802, London, England Find all individuals with events at this location
     3. Elizabeth McGillivray
    Last Modified 5 May 2010 
    Family ID F1371  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Photos
    The Innerarity House     		The Innerarity House
    Pensacola, Florida, ca. 1890. Originally the Panton, Leslie warehouse. The warehouse was converted into the residence of the Inneraritys after the Pensacola fire of 1848 destroyed the original Panton-Forbes House. The Innerarity House was destroyed by fire in 1915.
    Old Pensacola    		Old Pensacola
    Innerarity House. Charles Thomas Cottrell, photographer.
    Crest of the Clan McGillivray    		Crest of the Clan McGillivray

    Histories
    Coastal Encounters: the Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century     		Coastal Encounters: the Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century
    Brown, Richard F. Brown, ed. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007)
    Preview
    Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola     		Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola
    Bense, Judith Ann Bense, ed.(Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1999)
    Preview
    Forty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution    		Forty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
    (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1928)
    The Muscogees or Creek Indians 1519-1893    		The Muscogees or Creek Indians 1519-1893
    Tarvin, Dr. Marion Elisha, Alabama Historical Quarterly (Wetumpka, Alabama: Alabama State Department of Archives and History, 1955), Vol. 17, pp. 125-134. Also includes Bartram, William, Extracts from the Travels of William Bartram, pp. 110-124.

  • Sources 
    1. [S336426] Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Panton, Leslie & Company and John Forbes & Company, 1783-1847, William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson, (Pensacola, Florida: University of West Florida Press, 1986), 24, n. 56.

    2. [S336355] McGillivray of the Creeks, Caughey, John Walton, (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2007), 13.

    3. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 253.

    4. [S336337] Coastal Encounters: the Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century, Brown, Richmond Forrest, ed., (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 82 [Karl Davis, The Founding of Tensaw: Kinship, Community, Trade and Diplomacy in the Creek Nation].
      "The mostly uninhabited area at Tensaw north of the Spanish outpost at Mobile was under McGillivray's control, and a new town there would protect Creek borders, link the Creeks economically and politically to the Spanish, and simultaneously give the Creeks leverage with the Americans. The Spanish accepted McGillivray's proposal of a mutually beneficial relationship. In addition to providing a reliable food supply for Spanish Florida, a strong Creek Nation promised to be a valuable buffer against American expansion. The founding of the mixed community at Tensaw after 1783 thus reflected a dynamic survival strategy that encompassed both flexibility and adherence to tradition."

    5. [S336320] Georgia History Stories, Chappell, Joseph Harris , (New York, New York: Silver, Burdette and Co., 1905), 211.

    6. [S336321] A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816, Saunt, Claudio , (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 79.

    7. [S336326] McIntosh and Weatherford: Creek Indian Leaders, Griffith, Benjamin W., Jr., (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1988), 37-38.

    8. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 221.

    9. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 221, 233.

    10. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 229, 247.

    11. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 238-250.

    12. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 235.

    13. [S336314] History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, Albert James Pickett, (Sheffield, Alabama: Robert C. Randolph, 1896), 431.
      "General McGilliveray was interred with Masonic honors in the splendid garden of William Panton, in the city of Pensacola."

    14. [S336311] The McGillivray and McIntosh Traders on the Old Southwest Frontier 1716-1815, Amos J. Wright, Jr., (Montgomery, Alabama: NewSouth Books, 2001), 253-254.