The mystery of Douglas Macnee

Our Dad’s early life was a mystery to us.  We knew he was an only child, born in the United States, educated in Scotland, and that he had spent some years working in India, but very little else about his life before he married Joan Harley in 1935.  He was an American citizen, and he remained a US citizen his entire life, though he spent most of his life in the UK and never returned to the US as an adult. 

We never met our Macnee grandparents for they died before we were born.  Douglas’s father, Robert Hamilton Macnee, had been an accountant, and something of a ne’er-do-well, we learned.  He was reputed to have been, inter alia, accountant for the New York Yacht Club, which runs the Americas Cup race. The family was said to have crossed the Atlantic between the US and Scotland a number of times, before Douglas and his mother left Robert in the USA and returned to Scotland. 

We knew that Dad’s parents were separated, and that his mother was responsible for his upbringing. We assumed that Robert had remained in the US for the rest of his life. But Mum later pointed out that he had returned to live in Scotland. Mum also reported that Douglas and his mother had lived with the Macnee family in Glasgow, rather than with her own family. But now we know so much more, and you can read it here.