Anne McKay was born in Skye, a Gaelic speaker with very little English. She boarded in Inverness with her children during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. After the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, McKay's cellar was used to imprison MacDonald of Belfinlay and Robert Nairn, a prominent Jacobite and deputy paymaster. Robert Forbes, a nineteenth-century memoirist, noted that McKay was 'a wise, sagacious creature' who was called upon to help the injured prisoners. When an escape plan was made, McKay helped by bringing clothes and food for Nairn and distracting the guard.