Lachlan McGillivray (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.
More probable is that he emigrated in the late 1730s to either Charleston, South Carolina, or Augusta, Georgia, where members of his family had been engaging in the Indian trade for a generation.
Records attest that Farquhar McGillivray employed indentured servants, and it was not uncommon for such arrangements to be made between relatives.
On January 10, 1736, Lachlan and 176 emigrants, including women and children, arrived on board the Prince of Wales to establish the town of Darien, Georgia, originally known as New Inverness.
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.
[3] Though there is no record of McGillivray having married in the Scottish Presbyterian tradition, he took as a consort a high-status Creek woman named Sehoy Marchand.
Albert Pickett and other biographers portrayed Sehoy as a beautiful black-eyed Indian princess, with whom McGillivray was instantly lovestruck.
[4]: 344 The children lived most of the time with their mother in the Creek tribe and learned its language and ways, although the father sent Alexander to a European-American school in Charleston and Augusta.
Though the Creek tribes treated marriage as a serious institution and had strong taboos against infidelity (especially by women), divorce was permissible and easily achieved.
After the late 1750s, Sehoy married at least two other men (monagamously), with whom she bore at least two additional children, before McGillivray relocated to Savannah.
[5] McGillivray's will and other surviving writings frequently noted Alexander, referred to as his "natural son," a euphemism for illegitimate.
McGillivray took an interest in Alexander, for he arranged and paid (at considerable expense) for the boy's education at Presbyterian academies in Charleston and Augusta.
Lachlan McGillivray returned to Scotland for lengthy visits prior to the American Revolution, but appeared to have identified as a citizen of North America, the source and location of his considerable fortune.
In the Scottish insurrections of the early 18th century, his Clan Chattan had mostly sided with the cause of James the Old Pretender and Bonnie Prince Charlie.
After his son's death in 1793, McGillivray paid for Alexander's orphaned children, Alleck and Mary (their mother had also died), to be brought to Scotland.