(10 May 1869-28 Oct. 1957), newspaperman. (Daniel A. Macpherson, D. A. Macpherson) Born in the Williamstown area of GC. Parents: Alexander Macpherson and his wife Catherine Grant, who was the sister of the eminent railway contractors Angus A., John R. and Lewis A. Grant. In 1887, young Macpherson went to California to work for his uncles’ Grant Brothers construction enterprises. Later, he settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to assist in managing his Grant uncles’ business interests there. Albuquerque was to be his home apparently for the remainder of his life. In Albuquerque, he was manager of what is believed to have been the city’s first first electrical company, water company, and ice company. He was also involved in beginning the Apache Trail subdivision of the city. In 1941, he was president of the Rocky Mountain Finance Company. He was a member of the city commission and the school board. And not least among the roles he played, he was publisher of an Albuquerque newspaper, the Morning Journal. It has not been determined in what relationship, as publisher, he stood to the ownership of the newspaper. He was married in Chicago in April 1901 to Emma M. Steinbeck (14 Oct. 1877-9 Oct. 1954). One of their children, Daniel Angus, Jr. (19 Nov. 1907-26 May 1979), born in Albuquerque, was a judge. Another son, Robert Anthony Macpherson (29 May 1910-), also born in Albuquerque, was an admiral in the U. S. Navy.
Daniel A. Macpherson died in Albuquerque. (three children)
Porter A. Stratton, in his scholarly study The Territorial Press of New Mexico 1834-1912 (1969), shows that Daniel A. Macpherson was an innovative and forceful newspaperman, who strove successfully to strengthen the financial base of his newspaper (by increasing circulation and advertising revenues) enabling him to operate free from political subsidies and political constraints, and to be enabled, therefore, to engage in political criticism. Once he had marked out the trail, other newspapermen followed. Macpherson’s own political position, thus sustained, was that of independent Republicanism.
In Sept. 1906, “Mr. D. A. Macpherson, of the Morning Journal, Albuquerque, New Mexico,” and Mrs Macpherson, were “visiting Mr. Macpherson’s old home near Williamstown. “ (Cornwall Standard 28 Sept. 1906) In 1915 a reporter writing about Cornwall ex-mayor John A. Chisholm’s recent tour of the Canadian and American West stated that Chisholm spent “nearly a week at Albuquerque, N. M., where he was most hospitably entertained by numerous old acquaintances, including Daniel A. MacPherson, formerly of Williamstown, and now proprietor of the leading newspaper in that city.” (Cornwall Freeholder 7 Oct. 1915) See also Sullivan family of Williamstown.
Donald S. Dreesen, “Nineteenth-Century Pioneers of Albuquerque: Families Living in Bernalillo County, New Mexico,” Albuquerque, N. M., Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico, 1991 (microfiche); valuable 1-page biog. in point form, with notes on printed sources * Admiral Robert Anthony Macpherson: Who’s Who in America, 37th edn. (1972-1973), Vol. 2, p. 1984