Kentucky: A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 6th ed., 1887,
Shelby Co.

W. A. McKENZIE, a native of Shelby County, Ky., was born July 31, 1832.
His father, John McKenzie, was born in Bourbon County, March 19, 1798, and
passed ten years of his early life flatboating to New Orleans, before
steamboats were on the Mississippi, when flatboatmen had to walk on their
return trips.  Mr. McKenzie walked to his home near Winchester, Ky., twice,
but later returned on the first steamboat that ever plied the Mississippi
and was thirty days coming from New Orleans to Louisville, which was
considered very fast time in those days.  John McKenzie married Sallie
Niel, and the youngest daughter of Allen Niel, and moved from Clark County,
Ky., to Shelby County, in 1830, where he died in 1870.  William McKenzie,
the grandfather of our subject, came to Kentucky from Maryland with his
father's family when sixteen years old, and landed off a boat known at
that time as a broadhorn, at Limestone; he went with them to Lexington,
Ky., but they could not get a cabin in the town, and therefore went to
Bryant's Station for protection from the Indians, having been attacked by
then the night before they landed at Limestone.  They remained two years at
the fort, and then bought land near Step's Crossroads, in Bourbon County,
Ky.  William McKenzie was a soldier under Anthony Wayne in the war of
1812-1815.  The father of William McKenzie came from Scotland, settled
in Maryland and remained there until about the close of the Revolutionary
war, in which he was a soldier, then removed to Kentucky.  Allen Niel was
a native of Scotland, and settled in Clark County in an early day, working
at the stone-mason's trade.  He married the daughter of Robert Elkins,
he pioneer preacher of the State, who came to Kentucky in 1781, and
preached to the people for forty years without pecuniary reward.  He
reared a family of twenty-two children.  Allen Niel was the father of Hons.
William and Robert Niel, of Columbus, Ohio, who settled at Columbus when
it was a village, and were identified with all its important business
interests, becoming millionaires.  William Denison, of Ohio, and Gen.
Henry S. Niel, who commander George Morgan's artillery, and was with the
Federal Army in all of its hardest fought battles, memorably that of
Corinth, Miss., where he had his horse shot seven times.  Robert Niel was
the father of John B. Niel, governor of Utah Territory.  W. A. McKenzie
lives in Marshall's Precinct, Shelby County, was educated at the common
county schools, was reared to farming, and now owns 225 acres of land, and
devotes his time to raising short-horned cattle and trotting horses.
John McKenzie raised three children: Amanda (wife of Silas Ford), Robert
and W. A. Robert enlisted in the fall of 1862 in the Confederate Army,
under John Morgan, and was wounded at the battle of Hartsville, Tenn., and
was on crutches nearly the balance of the war, but kept up with the army
and was present at the battle of Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge, and
was with Gen. Joe Johnston at the final surrender.

McKenzie Niel Elkins Denison Ford
=
Bourbon-KY Winchester-Clark-KY Lexington-Fayette-KY Columbus-Franklin-OH
MD UT Scotland

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/shelby/mckenzie.wa.txt