inevitable processes. Both his grandfather and grandmother on his
father's side were born in Ireland, of Irish-Scotch parents. To his
paternal great-grandfather, Alexander MacDowell, the composer traced
the Scottish element in his blood; his paternal great-grandmother,
whose maiden name was Ann McMurran, was born near Belfast, Ireland.
Their son, Alexander, born in Belfast, came to America early in the
last century and settled in New York, where he married a countrywoman,
Sarah Thompson, whom he met after his arrival in the New World. A son,
Thomas (Edward's father), was born to them in New York--where, until
his retirement some time ago, he was engaged in business for many
years. He married in 1856 Frances M. Knapp, a young American woman of
English antecedents. Five years later, on December 18, 1861, their
third son, Edward Alexander (he discarded the middle name toward the
end of his life), was born at 220 Clinton Street, New York--a
neighbourhood which has since suffered the deterioration common to
many of what were once among the town's most irreproachable
residential districts.

From his father, a man of genuine aesthetic instincts, Edward derived
his artistic tendencies and his Celtic sensitiveness of temperament,
together with the pictorial instinct which was later to compete with
his musical ability for decisive recognition; for the elder MacDowell
displayed in his youth a facility as painter and draughtsman which his
parents, who were Quakers of a devout and sufficiently uncompromising
order, discouraged in no uncertain terms. The exercise of his own gift
being thus restrained, Thomas MacDowell passed it on to his younger
son--a somewhat superfluous endowment, in view of the fact that the
latter was to demonstrate so ample a gift for an equally effective
medium of expression.