- For the New Zealand politician see Arthur Guinness
Arthur Guinness (September 24 1725 – January 23, 1803) was an Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness Brewery business and family. Arthur was born in Celbridge and raised in Ardclough, County Kildare. Arthur set up his first brewery in Leixlip, but the first pint of Guinness was brewed in Celbridge in a pub where the Mucky Duck Pub currently stands.
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Family
The Guinness family claimed descent from the Magennis clan of County Down in the 1600s, but recent DNA evidence instead suggests descent from the McCartans, another County Down clan.[1] His father was land steward for the Archbishop of Cashel, Dr. Arthur Price, and may have brewed beer for the other workers on the estate. In his will, Dr. Price left £100 each to the Guinnesses. In 1761 Arthur Guinness married Olivia Whitmore in St. Mary's Church, Dublin, and they had 21 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood. From 1764 they lived at Beaumont House, now part of Beaumont Hospital, between Santry and Raheny in north County Dublin. Three of his sons were also brewers, and his other descendants eventually included missionaries, politicians and authors.
Brewer of porter
Arthur leased a brewery in Leixlip in 1755, brewing ale. Five years later he left his younger brother in charge of that enterprise and moved on to another in St. James' Gate, Dublin, at the end of 1759. By 1767 he was the master of the Dublin Corporation of Brewers. His first actual sales of porter were listed on tax (excise) data from 1778, and it seems that other Dublin brewers had experimented in brewing porter beer from the 1760s. His major achievement was in expanding his brewery in 1797-99. Thereafter he brewed only porter and employed members of the Purser family who had brewed porter in London from the 1770s. The Pursers became partners in the brewery for most of the 1800s. By his death in 1803 the annual brewery output was over 20,000 barrels.
Politics
Guinness was a supporter of Henry Grattan in the 1780s and 1790s, not least because Grattan wanted to reduce the tax on beer. He was a brewers' representative on Dublin Corporation from the 1760s until his death. Like Grattan, Guinness was publicly in favour of Catholic Emancipation from 1793, but was not a supporter of the United Irish during the 1798 rebellion. He was buried at his mother's family plot at Oughter Ard in County Kildare in January 1803.
Noteworthy descendants
- grandson Benjamin Lee Guinness
- grandson Henry Grattan Guinness
- great-granddaughter Mary Geraldine Guinness
- great-great-great-grandson Os Guinness
References
- D. Wilson, Dark and Light (Weidenfeld, London 1998). ISBN 0-297-81718-3
- M. Guinness, The Guinness Spirit (Hodder, London 1999) ISBN 0-340-72165-0
- Archives at St. James's Gate Brewery.
- List of people on stamps of Ireland
