Arthur Guinness

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Arthur Guinness

Arthur Guinness (September 24, 1725 – January 23, 1803) was an Irish brewer and the founder of the Guinness Brewery business and family.

1 Family
2 Brewer of porter
3 Politics
4 Noteworthy descendants
5 References
6 External link

[edit] Family

He was born in Celbridge, County Kildare, the son of an Anglican land steward. His family claimed descent from the Magennis clan of County Down in the 1600s, but this could not be proved either way. His father worked 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. He married Olivia Whitmore in 1761, 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.

[edit] 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 (beer) 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.

[edit] Politics

He was a supporter of the patriot 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, he 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.