Isaac McCoy

Isaac McCoy (June 13, 1784 – June 21, 1846) was a Baptist missionary among the Native Americans in present-day Indiana, Michigan and Missouri. He was an advocate of Indian removal from the eastern United States, proposing an Indian state in what is now Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. He also played an instrumental role in the founding of Grand Rapids, Michigan and Kansas City, Missouri.

McCoy was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1784. Five years later, the McCoy family rafted down the Ohio River to Kentucky, settling first near Louisville and in 1792 in Shelby County. The senior McCoy was a Baptist minister, and he and his son had profound arguments on religion. (The elder McCoy, on theological principles shared by many of his congregation, was opposed to evangelizing.) While still young, Isaac was inspired to become a missionary to Native Americans and determined on that work.

In 1804 at the age of 20, Isaac McCoy married Christiana Polke (1778–1851), age 16, in Kentucky; she was a cousin of the future President James K. Polk. Christiana's family had been at Kincheloe's Station, Nelson County, Kentucky, when it was attacked. Her mother and four siblings were carried into captivity by the Shawnee and Christiana was born after that time. They were taken to Michigan, where they lived with the Indians for 13 months. They were eventually "bought" or ransomed by the British, who sent them south to return to their people in Kentucky.

The McCoys had 14 children; only four survived to adulthood. John Calvin McCoy assisted his father and became prominent in his own right in the early history of the Kansas and Missouri frontiers.

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