Her Family Tree Link (It can be slow to load) -- Ignore George MacKay reference: (b. 1801) He is obviously not James' father (who immigrated as an adult in the 1730s).

Her Spouse: Isaac LaRoche (P643243)

Their Children [***my connection]:

• James A. LaRoche (P643197)

• Lawrence ... (P690540)

• SARAH LaROCHE (P690543)

• Oliver A. LaROCHE (P690548)***

• Adrian LaROCHE (P690562)

• John LaRoche (P690566)

• Isaac Drayton ... (P795973)

More about Donald MacKay, grandfather of Elizabeth Sophia [Oliver] LaRoche: Donald owned several large pieces of property, by royal grant and purchased all of Fredrica when it was abandoned. James Spalding, a later arrival to the colony became his partner. Donald married first Elizabeth, and second (possibly) Gene Gordon. It is mentioned in an old book about Georgia's Golden Isles and Sea Island, that his daughter Catherine married a Col. William McKintosh, brother of Lachlan -- but that is not correct -- it was Donald's sister who married John Mohr McKintosh's son William. But it was also thought that she was also Lachlan's cousin and related to the Spalding gentleman (James) who married Catherine's daughter.

Donald's daughter Sarah lived with her mother, who married a Leman or Leamon, second while Donald (first husband) was still alive. It is possible that he had a second wife Gene Gordon but he had no children with her. Sarah (and her sister) is mentioned as Donald's natural daughter in Donald's will, and is also mentioned in Mr. Leamon's will. She did not receive her legacy from Donald as it was withheld by Donald's brother-in-law (Lachlan) who administered the will. This resulted in a large court case, the first of its kind in Georgia. She lost.

In 1735 a body of one hundred and thirty Highlanders with fifty women and children sailed from Inverness and landed at Savannah in January 1736. They were under the leadership of Lieutenant Hugh Mackay. Some Carolinians endeavoured to dissuade them from going to the South by telling them that the Spaniards would attack them from their houses in the fort near where they were to settle, to which they boldly replied, Why, then, we will beat them out of their fort, and shall have houses ready built to live in. " This spirit," says Jones, "found subsequent expression in the efficient military service rendered by these Highlanders during the wars between the Colonists and the Spaniards, and by their descendants in the American Revolution. To John Mohr McIntosh, Captain Hugh Mackay, Ensign Charles Mackay, Col. John McIntosh, General Lachlan McIntosh and their gallant comrades and followers, Georgia, both as a Colony and a State, owes a large debt of gratitude. This settlement was subsequently augmented from time to time by fresh arrivals from Scotland .... Its men were prompt and efficient in arms, and when the war cloud descended upon the southern confines of the province, no defenders were more alert or capable than those found in the ranks of these Highlanders.

"No people," says Walter Glasco Charlton, "ever came to Georgia who took so quickly to the conditions under which they were to live or remained more loyal to her interests" than the Highlanders. "These men," again says Jones, "were not reckless adventurers or reduced emigrants volunteering through necessity, or exiled through insolvency or want. They were men of good character, and were carefully selected for their military qualities .... Besides this military band, others among the Mackays, the Dunbars, the Baillies, and the Cuthberts applied for large tracts of land in Georgia which they occupied. Many of them went over in person and settled in the province." http://www.scotlands.com/usa/3.html

The Clan Mackay (motto: manu forti-with a strong hand), a Scottish clan from the country's far north in the Scottish Highlands, has roots in the old province of Moray. The traditional seat of the Mackays was at Castle Varrich (14th Century). Earlier, Clan MacKay fought under William Wallace at the Battle of Stirling Bridge (1296) to vanquish the English and again with Robert Bruce (1314) at the Battle of Bannockburn. Several hundred years of clan warfare follows, then as James of Scotland becomes King of England, the Clans are fighting against British foes. On June 20, 1628, chief of his clan, Donald Mackay, became Baron Reay of Reay in the Peerage of Scotland by Charles I, which he supports during the English Civil War. At Fort Fredrika (St. Simons Island, GA) a group of Highlanders led by Charles MacKay from Durness (Diuranais) help Oglethorpe ambush invading Spanish forces in July 1742 securing control of the South Georgia for the British Empire.  From The Correct History of Clann MacAoidgh (The Clan Mackay), Dr. Gary Mckay, http://www.geocities.com/mckyrbnsn/mclinks/gary1.html, (1999).

Around 710 A.D., three separate tribes leave Ireland from a region known as Dalriada and land in what is now known as Argyll and the southern Hebrides. One of the tribes is known as the C'nel Lorne, the progenitors of Clann MacAoidh. The C'nel Lorne are descended from Ædh, grand-son of the Irish king N'iall. In the 12th Century, the Mac Ædh/Mac Æd/Mac Heths (all variations of the Gælic pronunciation of the time) become a virtual separate kingdom around the Moray Firth on Scotland's middle north eastern coast; but, within 100 years, a series of losses causes a migration north and west into the Highlands into the region of the Strathnaver. To finish, Clann M'hic Aoidgh is one of the most famous and certainly oldest of the true Gælic Clans. If you are blood related, then you may count King Niall of Ireland, King David of Scotland, and Macbeth as your relations, among many descended from Adam.

Scottish emigration to America came in two streams; one direct from the Scotland proper and the other through the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Those who came by this second route are usually known as "Ulster Scots," or more commonly as Scotish-Irish, claimed as Irishmen by Irish writers in the United States. This is perhaps excusable but hardly just. Throughout their residence in Ireland the Scots settlers preserved their distinctive Scottish characteristics, and generally described themselves as "the Scottish nation in the north of Ireland." They, of course, like the early pioneers in this country, experienced certain changes by the influence of their new surroundings; but, as one writer has remarked, they "remained as distinct from the native population as if they had never crossed the Channel. They were among the Irish but not of them." Their sons, too, when they attended the classes in the University of Glasgow, signed the matriculation register as "A Scot of Ireland." They did not inter-marry with the native Irish, though they did so to some extent with the English Puritans and with the French Huguenots. (These Huguenots were driven out of France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and induced to settle in the north of Ireland by William III. To this people Ireland is indebted for its lace industry, which they introduced into that country.)

Again many Irish-American writers have assumed that the Scots settlers were entirely or almost of Gælic origin, ignoring the fact, if they were aware of it, that the people of the Scottish lowlands were "almost as English in derivation, as if they were living still the North of England. Parker, the historian of Londonderry, New Hampshire, speaking of the early Scots settlers in New England, has well said: "Although they came to this land from Ireland, where their ancestors had a century before planted themselves, yet they retained unmixed the national Scotish character. Nothing sooner offended them than to be called Irish. Their antipathy to this appellation had its origin in the hostility then existing in Ireland " among the Gælic-Celts, the native Irish and the English colonists. Belknap, in his History of New Hampshire (Boston, 1791) has quoted a letter from the Rev. James MacGregor (1677-1729) to Governor Shute in which the writer says: "We are surprised to hear ourselves termed Irish people, when we so frequently ventured our all for the British Crown and liberties against the Irish papists, and gave all tests, of our loyalty, which the [English] government of Ireland required, and are always ready to do the same when demanded."

Down to the present day the descendants of these Ulster Scots settlers living in the United States, those who have maintained an interest in their origin, always insist that they are of Scottish and not of Irish origin. On this point it will be sufficient to quote the late Honorable Leonard Allison Morrison, of New Hampshire. He said: "I am one of Scotch-Irish blood and my ancestor came with Rev. McGregor of Londonderry, and neither they nor any of their descendants were willing to be called 'merely Irish.' I have twice visited," he adds, "the parish of Aghadowney, Co. Londonderry, from which they came, in Ireland, and all that locality is filled, not with 'Irish' but with Scots-Irish, and this is pure Scotish blood to-day, after more than 200 years." The mountaineers of Tennessee and Kentucky are largely the descendants of these same Ulster Scots, and their origin is conclusively shown by the phrase used by mothers to their unruly children: "If you don't behave, Clavers [i.e., Claverhouse] will get you."

If we must continue to use the hyphen when referring to these early immigrants it is preferable to use the term "Ulster Scot" instead of "Scotch-Irish," as was pointed out by the late Whitelaw Reid, because it does not confuse the people the accident of birth, and because the people preferred it themselves. "If these Scottish and Presbyterian colonists," he says, "must be called Irish because they had been one or two generations in the north of Ireland, then the Pilgrim Fathers, who had been one generation or more in Holland, must by the same reasoning be called Dutch or at the very least English-Dutch." [ed.note: and many such as the Vanderlyns were of mixed-heritage]

Most of this page comes word for word from the work of others done long ago. Find the history addict HERE