Welcome to the Rev. Donald Sage Mackay wiki site!
Two American cousins, one from California and one from Washington, DC, are initiating this website for the descendents of Donald Sage of Caithness and his grandfather, Enaes Sage of Lochcarron — those in Scotland and those in America— to exchange information with one another: photos, memories, stories heard from their parents and grandparents, diaries, newspaper articles, family trees, etc, so we Mackay descendants may learn about the history of our particular branch of our Scottish ancestry and the existence of cousins close to our own age.
The grandchildren and great grandchildren of the Reverend Donald Sage Mackay of St. Nicholas Collegiate Reformed, Church in New York City, USA and the Reverend William Mackintosh Mackay of the South United Church of Aberdeen, Scotland still exchange visits and letters with great affection. We cousins hope that this fond relationship may extend down into further generations. Among other resources, we find in the New York Times Archives many news and religious articles about the Reverend Donald Sage Mackay. Russell Gasero, Archivist of the Reformed Church in America accepted scrapbooks containing dozens of old newspaper articles collected during the time Reverend Donald Sage Mackay served as pastor of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas in New York City, until his tragic, early death in 1908.
These scrapbooks were donated by Elizabeth Mackay Balderston, one of the Reverend's D.S.M.'s granddaughters, to The Reformed Church in America Archives (Russell Gasero, Archivist, 21 Seminary Place, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 1/732-246-1779 moc.loa|oresagr#moc.loa|oresagr) They will be available through this website sometime soon.
The Rev. William Murray Mackay, pastor for forty years of the Young Street Presbyterian, Glasgow, Scotland, "a Caithness man who with great singleness of heart laboured for the poor and needy." * left two sons who both followed him into the ministry, one who went to America, The Reverend Donald Sage Mackay of the Collegiate Church of St. Nicholas at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Eighth Street and the other, the Rev. William Mackintosh Mackay of the South United Church, Aberdeen, Scotland. The elder brother married Isabella Simpson Moffatt, the younger one married Helen Lawrence Smith of Vermont. The marriages in Scotland and in America each produced five children who lived to adulthood. The Scottish and American descendents of these ministers continue their "cousinship" still.
In the early 1900s, the Reverend William Mackintosh Mackay often came to visit his brother Donald and very nearly accepted the ministry of a large church in New Jersey. His son, the Reverend Donald Mackay, visited his American cousins a generation ago, as do his children today: Lord Donald Sage Mackay, his wife Leslie, Dr. Fiona Mackay and her husband Allen Skinner; Alison Mackay and her husband Phillip Bryceland; Alan and Ishbel Mackay, often with their own children. Visits from America to Scotland and from Scotland to America have continued from the late 19th century, through the 20th, into the 21st., with extraordinary joy and enrichment of family connection.
Many of us American cousins have delighted in the diaries and writings left by Rev. DSM's daughters - Annette, Winifred and Olivia - who described their life in New York as children of a prominent minister, their visits to their grandmother in St. Albans, Vt and to their summer house in Blue Hill, ME.
We hope that this site will be a meeting place where the stories of our family will be filled in and shared, encouraging further connections between the American and Scottish cousins.
Welcome, Mackays!