Lachlan McGillivray

Lachlan McGillivray (Dunmaglass, Inverness, Scotland, c. 1718 –1799) was a prosperous fur trader and planter in colonial Georgia with interests that extended from Savannah to what is now central Alabama. He was the father of Alexander McGillivray and the great-uncle of William McIntosh, two of the most powerful and historically important Native American chieftains in the history of the Southeast.

Early life

Details of Lachlan McGillivray's early life are sketchy; he left no account himself and his biographers often romanticized his tale, making among other claims that he was fleeing the Highland rebellion of 1745 and that he arrived penniless in a strange land, though probably neither of these is true. He was born into the McGillivray (or M'Gillivray, as he himself wrote the name) family of the Clan Chattan, a large Scottish clan traditionally led by members of the McIntosh family. More probable is that he emigrated to either Charleston, South Carolina or Augusta, Georgia, where members of his family had been engaging in the Indian trade for a generation before his arrival, which was probably in the late 1730s. He may have arrived as an indentured servant to his relative Farquhar McGillivray, a merchant with interests along the southeastern seaboard, as existing records attest that Farquhar McGillivray employed indentured servants and it was not uncommon for such arrangements to be made between relatives.

Immigration to North America

It is known that by the mid-1740s McGillivray was well established as a trader in the Upper Creek nation in what is now central Alabama. He established a fur trading post and plantation at Little Tallassee (also spelled Talisi in some documents) near today's Wetumpka, Alabama, possibly on the site of the former Fort Toulouse. He prospered and invested his trading and plantation profits in businesses on the Atlantic coasts of Georgia, eventually settling in Savannah, Georgia as a man of considerable wealth. In a will drafted in 1767, long before his death, he planned the disposition of a 281-acre (1.14 km²) plantation on Hutchinson Island, Georgia, 1,000-acre (4 km²) plantation known as Vale Royal upriver from Savannah, and cash bequests totalling more than £ 2,500, implying that he was in possession of that amount of currency, as well as numerous bequests of slaves and other valuable chattel.

Personal life

Though there is no record of M'Gillivray having married in the religious or legal sense of the word, he entered into a long-term relationship with a Creek woman named Sehoy Marchand. Early biographers claimed Sehoy Marchand was the daughter of a French officer at Fort Toulouse named Jean-Baptiste Marchand, said to have been murdered in a 1722 mutiny (though no historical evidence supports this statement). There is more support for the identity of her mother, also named Sehoy, a member of the Koasati (alternative spelling: Coushatta), or Wind Clan, a politically powerful lineage of the Upper Creek nation, and that her immediate family included several important chieftains, thus making her an excellent consort for an ambitious trader. As with M'Gillivray's youth, his "marriage" to Sehoy is much romanticized by Albert Pickett and other biographers, with Sehoy portrayed as a beautiful black-eyed Indian princess with whom he was instantly lovestruck, though historical and circumstantial evidence seem to portray the long-term relationship as a more pragmatic matter probably born at least as much of mutual convenience as any affection.

Family

It was a common practice for European born traders throughout North America to take wives among the tribes with whom they traded, regardless of whether they were already legally married to white women, and there is some evidence that the Indian women in question did not feel particularly violated or betrayed by the often temporal nature of these relationships. Though the Creek tribes treated marriage as a very serious institution and had strong taboos against infidelity (especially by women), divorce was also not only permissible but easily achieved (a husband could divorce a wife and by simply leaving her house, a wife her husband by leaving his possessions outside of her door [to the matrilineal Creeks, the house always belonged to the wife and was usually shared with her female relatives and their husband). The children born of such marriage became a class known as the mestizo who regardless of how much European ancestry they possessed were considered wholly Creek due to the matrilineal kinship conceipts of the Muscogee. McGillivray's union with Sehoy produced three known children but seems to have dissolved by the late 1750s, and Sehoy was married to at least two other men (monagamously) with whom she bore at least two additional children before McGillivray relocated to Savannah. McGillivray made neither provision nor mention of Sehoy in his 1767 will, though she was not only still alive but was the custodial parent of the son, Alexander McGillivray, whom he did mention, acknowledge, and provide for and who would be among the most important personages in the history of the 18th century southeast. McGillivray and Sehoy were also the parents of two daughters, Sophia and Jean (also spelled Jennet and Jeanne in various sources, and the same name as M'Gillivray's sister, Jeanne McGillivray McIntosh). Though M'Gillivray made neither mention nor provision for his daughters in his will, it is known from their own accounts that they had a relationship with him, visited him in Savannah, and his daughter Sophia named her oldest son, Lachlan McGillivray Durant, in his honor. McGillivray's will and other surviving writings do however make frequent mention of Alexander, referred to by his father as "my natural son" (a euphemism for illegitimate, as opposed to the distinction "lawfully begotten" employed for the issue of some of his relatives in the same documents). McGillivray, a patrilineal member of the Clan Chattan, may well have fought a kind of custody battle with his son's mother. As a member of the matrilineal Creeks saw her son (and daughters) as members of her own Wind Clan exclusively, for Alexander seems to have been reared with his uncle, Red Shoes, who was either brother or uncle to his mother Sehoy (accounts vary), the role of maternal uncles being far more important to the Creeks than the role of biological father in the instruction and upbringing of a child. At some point McGillivray clearly took an interest in his son, however, for he arranged and paid (at considerable expense) for Alexander's education at Presbyterian academies in Charleston and Augusta and for his apprenticeship in at least one mercantile houses and bequeathing him the substantial sum of £ 1,000 and other bequests in his will (though his most valuable assets, his estates outside of Savannah, he bequeathed to the "lawfully begotten" children of his Scottish siblings and cousins.

Return to Scotland

Lachlan McGillivray is known from references to his absences to have returned to Scotland for lengthy visits prior to the American Revolution, but seems to have considered himself a citizen of North America, a natural self identification as North America was the source and location of his considerable fortune. He had begun to play a progressively active role in Savannah's administration and his knowledge of Creek leaders and their languages/cultures proved useful in negotiations of treaties between the tribes and Savannah. Though Clan Chattan had mostly sided with the cause of James the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie in the insurrections of the early 18th century and though Lachlan signed petitions opposing certain Crown colonial policies (particularly parliamentary taxation), by the outset of the American Revolution his primary loyalties proved to the Crown rather than his adopted homeland. As the war progressed his Loyalist political leanings, though not uncommon in Savannah, earned him enemies among the Patriot factions and the Continental Army. McGillivray and at least two of his McIntosh cousins in the city were arrested by Continental soldiers as suspected spies, then liberated when the British captured the city, and briefly entered self imposed exile to points west of Savannah after the British evacuation at the end of the war. Following the 1783 Treaty of Paris, by which time British troops to protect Loyalist citizens, McGillivray's lands, slaves, and much of his other properties were confiscated and sold by the new national government. M'Gillivray and several of his Loyalist relatives and friends, liquidated whatever movable property they still possessed (still substantial in spite of the confiscation of the lion's share of his wealth) and returned to the McGillivray clan's estates in Dunmaglass.

Death and Legacy

In his native Scotland Lachlan was treated with high respect and responsibility, serving as an advisor and guardian for the orphaned head of the Clan Chattan. He continued a correspondence with his son Alexander and other friends and relatives in the New World, and upon his son's death in 1793 Lachlan paid for Alexander's orphaned children, Alleck and Mary (their mother was also dead) to be brought to Scotland where he arranged for their education and to the extent that he could do so without crossing the ocean had a role in the settling of Alexander's very complicated estate. (Among other complications, it was difficult to tell what parts of Alexander McGillivray's lands belonged to him personally and which to his tribe, plus he died possessed of many slaves and cattle and other assets but also many debts, and for further complication though the mother of his two known children had predeceased him he was a polygamist who had other wives, mestizo like himself.) Lachlan McGillivray died in his native Scotland in 1799 at around 80 years of age. What estate he left and where his remains were interred are currently unknown. His grandson Alleck and granddaughter Mary were still residing with at the time of his death; Alleck died as a young adult shortly after his grandfather's death while the fate of Mary is uncertain.

Marriage and issue

Lachlan married Sehoy Marchand, member of the Wind Clan, a daughter of Jean Marchand and Sehoy

They had the following:

• Alexander McGillivray, became the leader of the Creeks as they attempted to prevent overrunning of Creek territory covering most of Middle and Southern Alabama and Georgia, as European settlers pushed inland from the Eastern seaboard.

Sehoy Marchand was also the mother of a daughter named Sehoy (Sehoy III), whose father may have been but was probably not Lachlan McGillivray. Sehoy III's many children by three husbands included William Weatherford, better known to history by his Creek name of Red Eagle.

McGillivray and Marchand did have at least two daughters together:

• Jean McGillivray, who married French officer Le Clerc Milfort, later of service in the Napoleonic army and famed as a memoirist.
• Sophia McGillivray who married Benjamin Durant and was mother to a large family and may have died at the Fort Mims massacre in which her nephew Red Eagle was involved.

References

• Cashin, Edward J. Lachlan McGillivray, Indian Trader: The Shaping of the Southern Colonial Frontier. University of Georgia Press, 1992. Covers Trading Life.

External links

• Family
• Pedigree
• Last Will of Lachlan McGillivray of Vale Royal, Georgia, 12 June 1767.