John Macgregor
Scottish shipbuilder

John Macgregor (1802–1858) was a Scottish shipbuilder.
Birth and early life
John Macgregor was christened on 24 August 1802 at Fintry, Stirlingshire. He was the third son of Annie McNicol and James Macgregor, a clockmaker. He also had one elder sister, two younger sisters, and two younger brothers. His father qualified as a clockmaker and he moved through Balfron, Fintry, and Comrie with his family working all the time as an engineer in the cotton mills that were developing in these parts of the Highlands.
The family were incomers to Fintry, having moved from Balfron. They remained there for about 14 years, before moving on to Comrie in Perthshire, where the last two of their eight children were born. The stay in Comrie must have been short, although Macgregor received a rudimentary education there. When Macgregor was 16, the family moved to Glasgow.
Macgregor began his apprenticeship as an engineer under David Napier at Camlachie.
“John Macgregor” enters the record as scottish shipbuilder. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Macgregor and Scottish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Macgregor” 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.