Clan MacArthur

King Arthur
The greatest of Ancient Britain’s legends, King Arthur, his knights and adventures have been sited in many different parts of Welsh-speaking Britain.  However, the old Scottish poem to survive chronicles Arthur fighting for Gododdin (in which Edinburgh now lies) against the invading Northumbrian English. It is after him that Edinburgh’s Arthur’s Seat was named.

John MacArthur (c.1800)
Born in Devon in England, John MacArthur went to New South Wales with his regiment in 1790, holding the post of Commandant ot Parramatta for nine years from 1973.

His breeding experiments with sheep, where he crossed Irish sheep with those from Bengal in 1794, followed by the introduction of Merino sheep from South Africa, was the beginning of Australia’s gigantic wool industry. In 1817, after studying the vine across Europe with his sons, he planted Australia’s first vineyard initiating another enormous antipodean industry.

General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
The son of Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur, who's father had migrated from Strathclyde to America, Douglas MacArthur became the twentieth century’s best known bearer of the name when he successfully commanded in the Second World War’s Pacific Theatre.

Alexander MacArthur (1901-47)
Main co-writer of the influential “No Mean City”, a novel set in his hometown of Glasgow. The book portrays the city as a brutal urban misery, offering only poverty, drunks and razor-gangs, and having sold over a million copies, spread this image worldwide.

MacArthur himself died on the banks of the Clyde, a derelict, drunk to death on disinfectant.