Historical Notes on the Lives of Alexander McCormick 1728-1803 and his wife Elizabeth Turner 1760-1839

Compiled by Thomas Arnold McCormick M.D.

ALEXANDER McCormick was born in County Down, Ulster, in 1728. His father came from Scotland to Ulster about 1688, during the reign of William 111 and Queen Mary, being in the Duke of Schomberg’s Army.

  The father’s family consisted of :

1. John                                     A Naval Surgeon with Admiral Byng (?) at

                                                Balearic Island. Died at Bath, England. 

2. David                                   A linen merchant in Belfast: 

3. ----                                      Lost in State of Carolina 

4. ALEXANDER                         - with his brother, came to Philadelphia in 1761 where Alexander entered a Mercantile House and gained much knowledge of the Fur Trade.

Brother #3 soon went on to North Carolina and was lost.

              ALEXANDER was born in Ulster in 1728: lived in Philadelphia from 1761 to 1769. Then, in company with other traders, he started for the Ohio River and the Ohio County (State)

              By 1771 he was a fully independent fur trader, and lived with the Wyandotte Indians, mainly on the Maumee River in Ohio, disposing of his furs in Detroit Michigan, in exchange for goods for the Indians. There were a number of Indian tribes in the Ohio and among them the Shawnee Tribe.

              From 1770-1771 to 1781, he lived with  the Indians – at first possible as a prisoner and later as Financial Agent for the Indians, and  Trader. During this time he married a sister of Wyandotte Chief, who died when their only child Thomas McCormick, was five years old.

              His trading took him among the other Tribes also and in 1778 while dealing with the Shawnees, Chippewa. He met a white girl, a prisoner for some two years. She was in much distress. McCormick offered to take her from the Indians if she would come to Detroit and marry him. She refused this chance of escape because she was engaged to marry a young man in her home district near Pittsburgh

  Next year when in the spring he again visited the same Indians an old squaw informed him that this girl, Elizabeth Turner, was in great danger as the Indians were threatening to kill her unless she married a young Indian who was determined to marry her. Her situation was so desperate that the old squaw, who was very fond of her, had hidden her away.

On receiving this information from the squaw, McCormick renewed this offer of marriage and finally Elizabeth accepted his offer. Alexander then met to the Chief with an offer to buy the prisoner. This buying of prisoners from the Indians by Alexander and a few other white traders, as well as by the Commander of the British troops in Detroit, enabled a number of white prisoners to secure their liberty, - among these, a Mr. Ridout and a Mr. Quick. 

In Elizabeth’s case the bargain was completed but the Indians refused to let her go.