Author: Fowler, William M.
Biography:
FOWLER, William McDonald (1780-1819: findmypast.co.uk)
A son of Balfour Fowler (d 1810) and his wife Margaret McDonald (d 1843) who had married in Crail, Fifeshire, on 16 May 1779, he was born on 26 May 1780 and baptised on 28 May. His maternal grandfather, William McDonald, was a Writer to the Signet (Scottish solicitor) and he ensured that his grandson had an excellent education, first at the burgh school in Crail, and then at St. Andrews where from about 1793 he attended the English and Grammar schools. At the age of fifteen he began studying at the United College in the university of St. Andrews (MA). He moved to Edinburgh where he served an apprenticeship in his grandfather’s Edinburgh law office. In 1806, as a Writer to the Signet, he set up his own legal practice in Edinburgh. His Spirit of the Isle established his name as a poet; it is dedicated to William Tennant (q.v.) whom he may have first met at St. Andrews. Fowler never married and he died at Crail after a lingering illness on 22 Nov. 1819. He was buried in the Crail cemetery on 25 Nov. His parents are in the same cemetery and their headstone was erected in 1863 by William’s two sisters, his only surviving siblings. (ancestry.co.uk 4 Dec. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 4 Dec. 2024; M. F. Conolly, Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Men of Fife [1866]) SR