Clan Mackay Treasurer
Our Treasurer, Mary Ann McKay
One of my long time interests has been doing genealogy for the family. It started many years ago when my aunt was
attempting to trace the family before the days of computers and has continued
to the present time.
I was able to trace several branches of my tree back to Scotland
and not to Ireland
as previously thought. I have Rankins
and Kelseys from southern Scotland
and Cupids from the Highlands. My husband’s family of McKays descends from John, the 2nd Lord Reay,
and his wife, Barbara Mackay of Scourie.
The family came to Nova Scotia
in 1775, on a ship named the Hector. His
great-grandfather, Daniel McKay, was born there but later immigrated to
Lethbridge,
Alberta with his family and two
grandsons. My husband, Douglas' father was brought to
Montana at
the age of three years after his mother and father had divorced.
Another interest of mine for many years has been Scottish
and English history and while I have read many books and watched many hours of
documentary films on TV, I am by no means an expert.
I was born in the very small town of Edgar,
Montana, which is about 30 miles
south of Billings. Douglas and I have been happily married for
51 years and have 3 sons (all living in Arizona)
and one daughter who lives in Gillette,
Wyoming.
We have six grandchildren who are scattered across the country.
Douglas is a retired maintenance
supervisor for the Federal Aviation Agency and I am a partially retired
non-profit accountant and Head Start director.
I still am doing Head Start fiscal reviews as a consultant for the Dept
of Health and Human Services. I was an
accountant and fiscal officer for community action agencies in Wyoming
and Hawaii.
We traveled to Scotland
in the year 2000 on a 14 day bus trip around Scotland
including the Highlands, Orkney, Skye, Iona
and Mull. It was
the trip of a lifetime and thoroughly enjoyed.
It was a lucky accident that
about two months before our trip, I got three emails in one day from people that I was with
on a web-site for Pictou, Nova Scotia and they all related the same fact, that
the Daniel James McKay that I had been looking for was the 13th
child of Roderick McKay and Elizabeth
McIntosh. I guess everyone had just
gotten tired of listing names by the time it got to him.
On returning to Arizona,
we began to attend the Celtic festivals and games held here and were very
disappointed to not find a Clan Mackay tent at any of them. I contacted Clan Mackay, USA, to see why
there wasn’t a representation here and was told that someone was supposed
to be doing it but had been having problems of late and wasn’t active
anymore. They suggested that I contact
the former commissioners, Pam Humphrey and Patti Bormann. It seems that they were happy to be relieved
of the job if we were willing to take over.
Since then, Douglas and I have been setting up the Clan Mackay tent at
all of the Games in Arizona. Now that I am the Treasurer, Doug has taken
on the job of commissioner on his own with my help and the help of our sons.
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