On my McGillivray page I had posted a paragraph about McGilvray Bottoms Road in Northwest La Crosse County, Wisconsin. A ferry was built there by Alex McGilvray. I do not know if that gentleman was related to my McGillivrays but hr probably is. I was curious if anyone was descended from that family and hoped that if so, they would contact me. I was delighted to receive an email from his descendant, Natalie. I am including her information from the email as she is interested in making connections with other McGillivrays also. If you read through her notes and would like to make contact, you can email her here.
Natalie’s Email 1
You asked about the McGilvray family in Wisconsin. The ferryman and innkeeper at Caledonia, Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, was Alexander McGilvray (1804?-1878) the uncle of my great-grandfather, Donald Alexander McDonald (1833-1906), who was born in New Gairloch, Pictou County, Nova Scotia to Alexander’s sister Isabella McGilvray (1807-1851?) and her husband Murdoch McDonald (1804?-1855).
Natalie’s Email 2
As I explained, my great-grandfather is Donald Alexander McDonald (1833-1906), and he and his four siblings:
- Catherine Anna McDonald (1836-1918)
- Charles Martin McDonald (1839-1908)
- John Jennings McDonald (1844-1883)
- Georgina Murray McDonald (1850-1889)
were born in Canada as their Scottish parents Murdoch McDonald (1804?-1855) and Isabella McGilvray (1807?-1851?) migrated westward from Pictou County, Nova Scotia to Ontario. Isabella vanishes after the birth of Georgina in February 1850 in Dundas, Ontario. There was a cholera outbreak in Ontario in the 1850s and it’s likely that it claimed both parents. Murdoch was found dead in Hamilton, Ontario in October 1855.
After the deaths of their parents, Donald took his four younger siblings to live with their McGilvray uncles who founded the town of Caledonia in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. Not much is known about Donald McGilvray (1802?-1880) other than he was a trader and liquor merchant according to Caledonia census records. He was listed as a retired farmer living with one of his nephews at the time of his death. Alexander McGilvray (1804?-1878) was actually quite well-known to Wisconsin historians. He was a ferryman and an innkeeper who brought his bagpipes with him from Scotland and entertained his guests. He also set up the Scotia post office at Caledonia. That’s why roads and bridges are named after him to this day.
According to the American Biography Index entry for Donald’s brother Charles Martin McDonald (they constantly went back and forth with the “Mc/Mac” spelling of the surname), the children’s father Murdoch McDonald was a lumberman who came from Scotland and taught Charles his trade. Donald’s career has been profiled in depth as both a towboat magnate and a politician (see the page for “Donald A. McDonald” on Wikipedia). He was educated in Dundas and taught at the very first schoolhouse in Caledonia when he wasn’t working as a river pilot. He probably got his first exposure from his uncle’s ferry service on the Black River.
In 1869, all of the McDonald siblings relocated from Caledonia to La Crosse, where they founded the towboat and lumber company called McDonald Bros. One of the company’s best-known boats was the “Bella Mac” named for their mother, Isabella McGilvray. On New Year’s Day (and his birthday), Donald married my great-grandmother in Trempealeau, Anna Black Beers (1836-1933), and the McDonald family moved into a grand house at 226 West Avenue North in La Crosse. For the next 50 years, the McDonald home became the epicenter of the city’s social activity. Anna was an Irish orphan raised as the ward of New York State Senator George Daniel Beers. She used the hostessing skills she learned in the Beers home to propel her husband’s career both as a businessman and a politician. Anna was an influential political figure in La Crosse and she moved to Washington, DC after Donald’s death, continuing to be active in the Woman’s National Democratic Club until her death at age 96-1/2. (It might seem like I’m digressing here, but there’s a fascinating connection that comes up later.)
It is difficult to research the origins of the three known McGilvray siblings — Alexander, Donald and Isabella — because Ancestry has conflated several individuals in Inverness-shire, Scotland with these common names who were born during the same time frame. Both Ancestry.com and ScotlandsPeople.com claim that the parents of this Alexander McGilvray are William McGilvray and Margaret Fraser, but I am currently working with a number of South Loch Ness genealogists in Inverness who claim this can’t be possible. I live in Louisiana, but right now I have a trip planned to fly over to Inverness and figure this out once and for all with “boots on the ground.”
The factors that drove people who lived on the south shore of Loch Ness to emigrate to Pictou, Nova Scotia revolved around a struggle between the “landlord class” and the “tenant farmer” families who could no longer afford to pay them. William McGilvray and Margaret Fraser were members of the Inverness “landlord class” so their children wouldn’t have been forced to emigrate. Alexander McGilvray, on the other hand, fits the classic pattern of the Clan MacGillivray/Clan Chattan “tenant farmer” families from Dores Parish on the south shore of Loch Ness who left for Pictou. The clearest sign, said the genealogists, was that his bagpipes were so important to Alexander that he brought them all the way from Inverness to Wisconsin. They believe these McGilvrays came from an area of Dores Parish called Bochruben, and I’m currently working with researchers at the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness to prove or disprove this theory.
After Alexander arrived in Pictou, he married a girl from a Scottish family who had already been established there before his arrival. Catherine Rankin (1813-1875) was born in New Glasgow, Pictou County, Nova Scotia. It should be noted here that Catherine’s nieces, the McDonald children of La Crosse, later forged a lifelong bond with the Hon. Jeannette Rankin of Missoula, the first Congresswoman from Montana. When Jeannette Rankin was elected to Congress and moved to Washington, DC, both Anna and her daughter Louise MacDonald (1877-1967) moved from La Crosse to join them. The two families can be found together at the same address in DC in 1920 and 1930 Census records, and Louise and Jeannette traveled together as late as 1953.
Alexander and Catherine originally settled in Bathurst, New Brunswick when they married in 1835. Unlike their sister Isabella and her husband Murdoch McDonald who went straight across Canada to Ontario, the McGilvray brothers Donald and Alexander took a different migration path westward which ended in Wisconsin. There are so many conflated Donald McGilvrays online that I’m not yet able to say if this Donald married and had children before he arrived in Caledonia. Alexander and Catherine did have these documented children born at various points in their journey. The first five were born in Canada, but Gilbert, the youngest, was born in Trempealeau. Gilbert’s obituary said he was famous for only being 1-1/2 pounds when he was born.
Mary Isabel McGilvray (1839-1876)
Colin Rankin McGilvray (1843-1921)
John Alexander McGilvray (1845-1915)
William Donald McGilvray (1847-1895)
Angus Joseph McGilvray (1851-1924)
Gilbert Oddie McGilvray (1853-1926)
Catherine died first in the family, so she has a large monument at the center of the McGilvray family plot at Trempealeau Cemetery. Alexander’s grave marker just says “Father” and his brother’s marker says “Uncle Donald.” Obituaries from La Crosse indicate there was a consumption epidemic that prompted several of the McGilvray children to move to the West Coast for health reasons.
Ruth, I hope this research is useful to you. I’m really looking forward to my trip to Scotland to finally stand on the original ancestral lands of Clan MacGillivray!
Natalie’s Email 3
I would love to reach out to as many people from Clan MacGillivray as possible before I go to Inverness. All signs point to this family being from Bochruben with strong ties to Clan Chattan, but before I hire a driver to take me out to what is literally the middle of nowhere, I hope to run this past as many sources as I can.
What you can do instead of flying over to Inverness is check out all the YouTube videos from people who go to Loch Ness and drive the roads with GoPro cameras on their dashboards. Bochruben is on a road called B862. You can also see cyclists who go off the main roads in that area. There’s a nice resort at Dores Beach, but I can’t stay there because the hotel has been recently purchased by a billionaire. He’s shut the place down for the next two years while he does extensive renovations. So I’m going to fly into Inverness, stay at the Royal Highland Hotel next door to the train station, then take the Caledonian Sleeper train overnight to London after I spend an afternoon at the Highland Archive Centre. It’s a good thing I booked all this stuff months ago and locked the prices in because airfare is crazy now!
Natalie’s Email 4
The Wikipedia page about George D. Beers leaves some interesting stuff out about my great-grandmother Anna. George married his own cousin, Harriet Beers, and only one of their children survived. Harriet and her sister Charlotte Beers moved from Newtown, Connecticut to start a school in Ithaca, so she had an interest in children but lost so many of her own. George was a family law attorney who was involved in many custody and guardianship cases in the Ithaca courts, so I found it very strange that there was absolutely no legal documentation about this little Irish girl in their home, who was listed in Census records as “Hannah Conley.” She was not otherwise considered a part of the Beers family and is not mentioned in any of their probate documents. However, when Hannah Conley turned up in Wisconsin, she signed her marriage license as “Hannah E. Beers, daughter of George and Harriet Beers.” Thereafter, she was known as Anna but mostly just “Mrs. D.A. MacDonald.”
Here’s more about Jeannette Rankin. Donald and Anna’s daughter Louise (1877-1967) always used the “MacDonald” spelling. Louise and her cousin Eleanor Ross McDonald (daughter of Donald’s brother Charles) graduated from college at Winona State Normal School and moved together to Missoula. For the next two decades, Louise lived in the Rankin family home in Missoula, working as a schoolteacher in the public schools there. Eleanor married a railroad engineer and settled permanently in Montana. Louise’s presence in the Rankin home was documented by the Missoula city directory and census records. By 1919, Donald’s sister Catherine (who was an artist known professionally as either “Katherine MacDonald” or “K Mac D”) had passed away, leaving Anna alone in the large McDonald family home in La Crosse. Anna sold the house to the Kienzle family, whose son grew up to be the film director Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without A Cause”), and moved to DC with Louise, and the Rankin sisters. They were later joined by Donald and Anna’s son, Donald Alexander “Dinnie” MacDonald (1880-1966), who was a famous theatrical performer of that period. The family’s social presence in DC was documented by the Evening Star newspaper on a weekly basis.
To view Natalie’s Ancestry tree go here. I removed the names of William McGilvray and Margaret Fraser as the parents of Alexander, Isabella and Donald. The names of John McGilvray and Isabella McBean were supplied by researchers from Scotland and we are still confirming their identities right now in Bochruben. For the moment, they are placemarkers in the tree.
In closing…
Special thanks to Natalie for providing the above information. I am looking forward to a follow up email regarding her completed trip. Please contact her if you have more information about the family. It would be immensely helpful as sometimes even the smallest clues produce the greatest results! Good luck Natalie!!
Last Updated on March 26, 2026 by rootie