From merchant seaman to revolutionary to bank president

Alexander McDougall was born in Islay in 1732 and six years later left Scotland with his father for New York.

In around 1745, when he was 14, he signed on as a merchant seaman. He worked on a number of vessels, and then in 1751 he visited his extended family on Islay. He stayed only a few months, but married a cousin, Nancy McDougall.

When the French and Indian War became an official war in 1756 as the “Seven Years’ War”, McDougall became a merchant privateer. He captured a number of French ships and made a small fortune.

In 1763 McDougall gave up the seafaring life and when New York established its revolutionary government in 1775, he was elected to the New York Provincial Congress. He was commissioned a colonel of the 1st New York Regiment in 1775 and a brigadier general in 1776 and a major general in 1777. In the 1780s, he represented New York in the Continental Congress and served as a state senator. He was the first president of the Bank of New York. He died in 1786.