Alexander MacKenzie

Alexander MacKenzie was born in Scotland, but his family moved to New York in 1764, when he was ten years old, then moved to Montreal in 1776 with the outbreak of the American Revolution. MacKenzie's father died when he was thirteen, and he went to work for a fur trading company to help support his family. He explored the Pacific Northwest for the British North West Company and in 1793 completed the first transcontinental crossing of the North American continent north of Mexico. The journal of his explorations were published in 1801. In 1812, he married and returned to Scotland, where he died in 1820.