Ancestors
Ann McKay
1768-1844 · North Carolina
Born 1768, Cumberland County, North Carolina
Died 1844
Father: Alexander McKay
Mother: Margaret McNeill
Children include Alexander
Ann McKay was born on 24 June 1768 in the Highland settlement on the upper Cape Fear, the eldest child of Alexander McKay and Margaret McNeill. Her grandfather Archibald McKay was one of the three first elders of the Long Street church, and the place the congregation first met was called McKay's before it was called Long Street.
She married Daniel Smith in Cumberland County on 15 December 1785, at seventeen. He was a grandson of John Smith, who had crossed from Scotland with the first Argyll families, and a son of Malcom Smith, who sat on the Long Street session beside her grandfather. Over the next thirty years she had fourteen children, five sons and nine daughters. Two of the sons carried her surname as a middle name, and her son Alexander, born in April 1793, was called Alexander McKay Smith after her father.
Her father was a Loyalist. When the Revolution was lost he would not live under the new government, and he took the rest of the family to the Bahamas. Ann stayed on the Cape Fear with her husband's people, who had sided with the Americans. Her father died at Great Exuma in August 1793, four months after her son Alexander was born.
In 1834 three of her sons, Alexander, Daniel and Lauchlin, left for Coosa County, Alabama with a colony of Scotch Presbyterians from the Long Street church, and two more, Neill and Archibald, went to Wilcox County. Every one of her sons and three of her daughters left North Carolina. Her husband died in June 1841. She died at the old place on 26 December 1844 and was buried beside him in the family ground, under a stone that names him, her and both her parents.
Sources
Gravestone in the Smith (McKeithan) burying ground, Quewhiffle Township, Hoke County, North Carolina, as transcribed on Find a Grave memorial 155328015: "IN MEMORY OF ANN, (large raised letters in stippled background) A. S. Relict of Col. Daniel Smith, and da(u)ghter of Alexr. & Margrt. McKay Born June 24, 1768, Died Dec 26, 1844, Aged 76yrs, 6ms, 2 dys." A white marble marker with a low gable top, damaged by one rifle shot; the footstone also has a gable top. Burial and dates also in Cemetery Records, Hoke County, Smith (McKeithan) Cemetery, 1814-1866, and in Sandhills Families: Early Reminiscences of the Fort Bragg Area, which give the marriage of Daniel Smith and Anna McKay as 15 December 1785.
The children are in Douglas F. Kelly, Carolina Scots (1998), page 159: "Daniel Smith d. 1841 in Cumberland County, m. 1785 Ann McKay (dau. of Alexander and Margaret McNeill McKay). All of their sons and three of the daughters moved to Alabama", followed by fourteen children, the fifth "Alexander McKay b. 1793, d. in Alabama 1871". A county heritage book's sketch, "The Family of Alexander McKay Smith", gives the Coosa brothers' parents as "Daniel Smith and Anna McKay, of Cumberland County, North Carolina".
Her gravestone, transcribed on Find a Grave memorial 155328015 (Smith Cemetery, Raeford, Hoke County). Douglas F. Kelly, Carolina Scots: An Historical and Genealogical Study of over 100 Years of Emigration (1998), the John Smith and the Alexander McKay families, pages 158 to 160 and 165 to 167 (archive.org carolina-scots-...-kelly-1998-ocr), citing Evelyn Futch Smith, Charn Cuimhne (1969), and Barbara McKay Thomas and Bettie McKay Fraine, Archibald McKay 1720-1797 (1979). "The Family of Alexander McKay Smith", a county heritage book clipping on the same memorial.
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Cite: Heirology, "Ann McKay (1768-1844)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/ann-mckay-1768-1844-bddbe2.