McKEESPORT, a city of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers (both of which are navigable), 14 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890), 20,741; (1900), 34,227, of whom 9349 were foreign-born and 748 were negroes; (1910 census) 42,694. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio, the Pittsburg & Lake Erie and the Pennsylvania railways. The city has a Carnegie library, a general hospital, and two business schools. Bituminous coal and natural gas abound in the vicinity, and iron, steel, and tin and terne plate are extensively manufactured in the city, the tin-plate plant being one of the most important in the United States. The total value of the city’s factory products was $36,058,447 in 1900 and $23,054,412 in 1905. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. The first white settler was David McKee, who established a ferry here in 1769. In 1795 his son John laid out the town, which was named in his honour, but its growth was very slow until after the discovery of coal in 1830. McKeesport was incorporated as a borough in 1842 and chartered as a city in 1890.
McKEES ROCKS, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 3 m. N.W. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 1687; (1900) 6352 (1264 foreign-born); (1910) 14,702. McKees Rocks is served by the Pittsburg & Lake Erie and the Pittsburg, Chartiers & Youghiogheny railways, the latter a short line extending (13 m.) to Beechmont. Bituminous coal and natural gas are found in the vicinity, and the borough ships coal and lumber, and has various important manufactures. There is an ancient Indian mound here. The first settlement was made in 1830, and the borough incorporated in 1892.
MACKENNAL, ALEXANDER (1835-1904), English Nonconformist divine, was born at Truro in Cornwall, on the 14th of January 1835, the son of Patrick Mackennal, a Scot, who had settled in Cornwall. In 1848 the family removed to London, and at sixteen he went to Glasgow University. In 1854 he entered Hackney College to prepare for the Congregational ministry, and in 1857 he graduated B.A. at London University. After holding pastorates at Burton-on-Trent (1856-1861), Surbiton (1862-1870), Leicester (1870-1876), he finally accepted the pastorate of the Congregational Church at Bowdon, Cheshire, in 1877, in which he remained till his death. In 1886 he was chairman of the Congregational Union, which he represented in 1889 at the triannual national council of the American Congregational churches. The first international council of Congregationalists held in London in 1891 was partly cause, partly consequence, of his visit, and Mackennal acted as secretary. In 1892 he became definitely associated in the public mind with a movement for free church federation which grew out of a series of meetings held to discuss the question of home reunion. When the Lambeth articles put forward as a basis of union were discussed, it was evident that all the free churches were agreed in accepting the three articles dealing with the Bible, the Creed and the Sacraments as a basis of discussion, and were also agreed in rejecting the fourth article, which put the historic episcopate on the same level as the other three. Omitting the Anglicans, the representatives of the remaining churches resolved to develop Christian fellowship by united action and worship wherever possible. Out of this grew the Free Church Federation, which secures a measure of co-operation between the Protestant Evangelical churches throughout England. Mackennal’s public action brought him into association with many well-known political and religious leaders. He was a lifelong advocate of international peace, and made a remarkable declaration as to the Christian standard of national action when the Free Church Federation met at Leeds during the South African War in 1900.
Besides a volume of sermons under the title Christ’s Healing Touch, Mackennal published The Biblical Scheme of Nature and of Man, The Christian Testimony, the Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, The Kingdom of the Lord Jesus and The Eternal God and the Human Sonship. These are contributions to exegetical study or to theological and progressive religious thought, and have elements of permanent value. He also made some useful contributions to religious history. In 1893 he published the Story of the English Separatists, and later the Homes and Haunts of the Pilgrim Fathers; he also wrote the life of Dr J. A. Macfadyen of Manchester. In 1901 he delivered a series of lectures at Hartford Theological Seminary, Connecticut, U.S.A., published under the title The Evolution of Congregationalism. He died at Highgate on the 23rd of June 1904.
See D. Macfadyen, Life and Letters of Alexander Mackennal (1905).
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MACKENZIE, SIR ALEXANDER (c. 1755-1820), Canadian explorer, was probably a native of Inverness, Emigrating to North America at an early age, he was for several years engaged in the fur trade at Fort Chippewyan, at the head of Lake Athabasca, and it was here that his schemes of travel were formed. His first journey, made in 1789, was from Fort Chippewyan along the Great Slave Lake, and down the river which now bears his name to the Arctic Ocean; and his second, made in 1792 and 1793, from Fort Chippewyan across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast near Cape Menzies. He wrote an account of these journeys, Voyages on the River St Lawrence and through the Continent of North America to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans (London, 1801), which is of considerable interest from the information it contains about the native tribes. It is prefaced by an historical dissertation on the Canadian fur trade. Amassing considerable wealth, Mackenzie was knighted in 1802, and later settled in Scotland. He died at Mulnain, near Dunkeld, on the 11th of March 1820.