Wednesday 10 February 2010

Tuesday 9th February 2010 - The Magruder of MacGregor

          I've been enjoying this splendid library for some time without realising that just round the corner from where I'm sitting is a painting of the man himself
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He appears to have got to this neighbourhod in the 1880s as a young engineer with the Georgia Pacific Railroad.  And he made good: really, really good.  He ran mines (like the Murray Mine at Blossburg, near where Glasgow got laid out), built coke ovens, and ended up selling his Tutwiler Coke and Iron Company for a million or so.
          The M in his name stood for Magruder, as you can see from the picture.  Back then, the Magruders thought they were Macgregors in disguise.  In 1916, E M was a Deputy Chief of the Clan Gregor Society in America.  He wrote a piece for their newsletter, saying how wonderful his mother-in-law was (not typically Scottish, that!).  She appears to have been a Magruder too, on her mothers side, tracing back to an original Maryland immigrant.
          Their feeling that they were MacGregors revolves round the outlawing of the MacGregors, which they thought produced some name changes.  Nearly everyone in the 1916 list of American Clan Gregor members is actually a Magruder, except for their honorary chief, the MacGregor of MacGregor, who was back in Scotland.  Well, it being 1916, he was actually in France.  I wonder if he came back: these Americans were quite generous in sending funds to look after wounded MacGregors.
 
          Later that night, on the WiFi crawl, I met a man from Chicago.  He was on his way to Florida, but had stopped near Memphis, Tennessee because of the snow.  (We're not getting snow here, so I think I might just be far enough south.)  He had a lot of dealings with what used to be a big Scottish bank, working in international real estate.  We agreed that when the history of this receding recession comes to be written, at least one Scottish bank will have had a lot to answer for.  So, having solved the problems of the world, and admired many of the local beers,  we toddled happily home, forgetting only the prime purpose of our outing, which was to upload some photos.

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