San Diego County Biographies
  
HENRY MacLAGAN

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


was born August 23, [no year] and died at the age of ninety years. He was a 
physician in the English army, and was at the battle of Waterloo. His wife, Mary
McGregor, was a descendent of Robert Ross McGregor. The subject of this sketch 
was born of the above parents, August 13, 1813, and was with his mother in 
Brussels when the battle of Waterloo was fought. He had four sisters and one 
brother, J. W. D. Maclagan, who now resides at Lindsey, Ontario. Henry first
left home as a cabin boy on a whaling ship for Greenland, sailing from Leith. On 
his return he went to Spain with the Spanish legation, serving eight years in 
the Carlist war. He was then at Algiers two years in the Foreign Legion. He then 
came to the United States, in 1843, visiting his brother in Canada. He then 
enlisted for the American war in Company B, Third Regiment United States 
Cavalry, and was made First Sergeant, February 26, 1848, at the city of Mexico. 
He served through the war and was discharged at Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Maine, 
July 16, 1851. In the same year he came to California, leaving New York by the 
steamer Brother Jonathan, for Chagres, and then across to Panama on a burro, and 
took steamer for San Francisco, the old steamer McKim. Off Cape St. Lucas the 
sails were blown away and they were obliged to run into the bay of San Diego. 
There was much sickness on board, and many deaths. He went into the employ of 
the Government, in the Quartermaster's department, under Captain McGruder, who 
was then stationed at San Diego, the subject of this sketch taking charge of 
wagon-trains. He then went to Arizona with Major Heintzelman, carrying the mail. 
He remained in the service about twenty years, variously employed, and traveling 
in any direction from the Mexican line to the northern forts. He was a bold, 
fearless man, and had received many wounds, in wars both in Europe and with the 
Indians. He is now suffering from a bad arrow wound in the head, which he 
received in the Tonto Basin about 1874.
        On March 31, 1853, he bought property of E. W. Morse, fifty by one 
hundred feet, on the corner of F and Atlantic streets, which he rented until 
1879, when he returned, and has since occupied, formerly as a saloon but later 
as a residence, being too feeble to attend to businesss. Mr. Maclagan is a man 
of seventy-six years, who has experienced the hardships and dangers of life, but 
never formed the more domestic relations of wife, always having lived a 
bachelor:
 
SOURCE:  An Illustrated History of Southern California:  Embracing the Counties 
of San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles and Orange, and the Peninsula of Lower 
California� Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1890.  p.-  335