David Macpherson (historian)
British historian
David Macpherson (26 October 1746 – 1 August 1816) was a Scottish historian.
Life
The son of a tailor and clothier, Macpherson was born in Edinburgh, 26 October 1746. He was probably educated at Edinburgh High School and the University of Edinburgh and then trained as a land surveyor. Working in the UK and America, he was able to earn some money before 1790, about which time he settled with his wife and family in London making his living as a man of letters.
Losing money through bad loans, Macpherson was occasionally in straitened circumstance from then on, but continued to write, encouraged by antiquarians such as Joseph Ritson and George Chalmers. He died in London, 1 August 1816.
Works
For some time Macpherson was a deputy-keeper of the public records, and assisted in preparing for publication the first and part of the second volume of the Rotuli Scotiæ. He edited Andrew Wyntoun's Orygynal Cronykil of Scotland, 2 vols., 1795; it was re-edited, in an enlarged form, by David Laing, for the Historians of Scotland series, 1879. Macpherson's other works were:
Geographical Illustrations of Scottish History, 1796.
Annals of Commerce, Fisheries, and Navigation ...
“David Macpherson (historian)” enters the record as british historian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Macpherson and historian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16828989. VIAF identifies the subject as 69271256. The Library of Congress control number is n87819486. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1746, 1816, 1790 and 1795.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Macpherson (historian)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.