Alexander Murray Macgregor

Alexander Murray was born on 27 November 1778, the second but only surviving son of Colonel Alexander Murray (1746–1822) of Napier Ruskie, Perthshire, an officer in the Royal Clan Alpin Fencibles, and his first wife Frances, daughter of Major Edmund Pascall.

[2][nb 1] Murray was part of Clan Gregor (or Macgregor), but his forebears had been forced to assume the surname Murray as a result of the persecution of the clan and the outlawing of their name from the 17th century onward.

[4] Murray's father was a younger son of Evan Murray, who had fought with his own elder brothers Robert and Duncan against the government in the Jacobite rising of 1745; in 1787, Evan's eldest son (and the younger Alexander Murray's uncle) John succeeded Duncan as chief of the clan and was created a baronet in 1795.

[9] The younger Alexander Murray was commissioned as a captain in the 90th Perthshire Volunteers in 1796 and served in the regiment until 1800, when he moved to the Royal Clan Alpin Fencibles, of which his father was colonel.

In 1812, he became lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Ceylon Regiment and was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Army in 1814.