Margaret Macpherson Grant

Margaret Macpherson Grant
Born	Margaret Gordon Macpherson (1834-04-27)27 April 1834 Garbity, Aberlour parish, Banffshire, Scotland
Died	14 April 1877(1877-04-14) (aged 42) Aberlour House, Moray, Scotland
Other names	Margaret Gordon Macpherson Grant
Years active	1854–1877
Known for	Financing St Margaret's Church, Aberlour and an orphanage
Family	Clan Grant

Margaret Macpherson Grant (27 April 1834 – 14 April 1877) was a Scottish heiress and philanthropist. Born in Aberlour parish to a local surgeon, she was educated in Hampshire, and was left an only child when her elder brother died in India in 1852. Two years later, she inherited a large fortune from her uncle, Alexander Grant, an Aberlour-born planter and merchant who had become rich in Jamaica.

Macpherson Grant took up residence in Aberlour House, which had been built for her uncle by William Robertson. She lived unconventionally for a woman of her time, dressing in a manner one newspaper called "manly", and entering into what was described as a form of marriage with a female companion, Charlotte Temple, whom she had met in London in 1864. Macpherson Grant donated generously to charitable enterprises, especially those associated with the Scottish Episcopal Church, establishing an orphanage (now the Aberlour Child Care Trust) and founding St Margaret's Episcopal Church in Aberlour. She drank heavily, and despite attempts by friends and family members to persuade her to stop, she always relapsed into alcoholism.

She made several wills over the course of her life that would have left her estate to Temple but, shortly after Temple left her to marry a man, Macpherson Grant revoked her will; she died intestate five months later aged forty-two. Her disinherited former companion sued, and the court determined that the bulk of her fortune should go to cousins, who were most likely unknown to her.