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From the Musical Times -
December 1, 1905
The Scotch Ancestry of the MacFarrens
To the Editor of the Musical Times...
Sir,—In the October issue of your Journal I had hoped to find a biographical
article on the late Walter Cecil Macfarren, but I observe there is only a
paragraph in which the reader is referred to a biographical sketch which
appeared in your issue of January, 1898. In that article there is a
paragraph which reads as follows: ‘The subject of our sketch is often taken
to be a Scotchman by reason of the “Mac” in his name; but he can lay no
claim to that nationality. Once, at a Scotch banquet, he felt much aggrieved
at finding his “Highland War Song,” for male voices, set down in the
programme as “Traditional”!’
Permit me to say that the writer of that biographical sketch was not
well-informed. Not only was Walter Macfarren connected with Scotland, but he
and his brothers George, John, and probably Basil, owed everything to their
grandfather, John Jackson, son of William Jackson, a farmer living at the
‘Barns of Clyde,’ New Kilpatrick, Glasgow. This John Jackson would have been
born about 1750 to 1755. He learned the trade of a bookbinder in Glasgow
about the year 1780. He removed to London, and became so successful that he
bought the house, No. 24, Villiers Street, Strand, for something over 1836,
and in which Sir George and Walter Macfarren were both born. He had a son
and a daughter. The son, a distinguished artist, died in 1874, and the
daughter, Susannah, married George Macfarren.
The Jackson family had many distinguished members. In the parish church
burying-ground of Eastwood, near Glasgow, there is a stone to the memory of
Andrew Jackson, dated 1663. This was just before the outbreak of the
Covenanting persecution of Claverhouse, when many ancestors of the
Macfarrens fought at Bothwell Bridge, and many were martyred. George Jackson
was executed in Edinburgh in 1684 for fighting at Bothwell Bridge. Thomas
Jackson was despatched to plantations in Virginia, but was done to death on
the passage. John and Annabella Jackson were sent to the same place, but
perished by shipwreck on the voyage. William Jackson refused to take the
oath of abjuration, and, upon being banished from Scotland, he settled near
Londonderry. President Andrew Jackson and General Stonewall Jackson were his
descendants; so that the Macfarrens came of people of talent.
I could enlarge upon the Jackson branch of the family, but I have said
enough to clearly show that it was the Scottish blood in the Macfarrens’
veins which raised them to the position they occupied.
Yours very truly,
John H. Jackson.
167, West Regent Street, Glasgow.
October 28, 1905. |
