McGillivray, William, 1764-1825.

William McGillivray was born in Dunlichty, Scotland, in 1764 and died in 1825. He was the eldest son of Donald McGillivray and Anne McTavish, daughter of John McTavish of Garthberg and sister to fur trader Simon McTavish. McGillivray moved to Montreal in 1784 to work for the North West Company under his uncle Simon McTavish, after Simon McTavish financed McGillivray’s secondary schooling. In the 1790s, he married Susan, a Cree or Metis woman born near Flin Flon on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, “a la façon du pays,” and had one daughter and three sons together. He later married Magdalen McDonald in 1800, daughter of Captain John McDonald of Garth, and had one son and five daughters, four of whom died in infancy. McGillivray was a commissioner and was made partner in McTavish, Frobisher and Company in 1793 and was appointed Justice of the Peace for the “Indian Territories” (now known as south of the Great Lakes between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers) and for the Province of Quebec, the district of Montreal, and Trois-Rivières. McGillivray was held responsible and arrested for the massacre of Seven Oaks, where the rivalry between the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company left twenty settlers killed. McGillivray was then released on bail in Montreal. He wrote accounts of his travels, and specifically, his interactions with Indigenous peoples in his journal.

Dunlichty, Inverness-shire, Scotland
Montreal, Canada

Revised on June 10, 2024, by Leah Louttit-Bunker

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mcgillivray_william_6E.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGillivray https://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/deputes/mcgillivray-william-4441/biographie.html https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/869343268