Jump to content

Guinness family

From Alfawiki
Guinness
Company typePrivate family business
IndustryBrewing, finance, politics
Founded1759; 267 years ago (1759)
FounderArthur Guinness
Headquarters
Dublin
,
Ireland
ProductsGuinness beer (dry stout)

The Guinness family is a distinguished Irish dynasty recognized for its significant contributions to brewing, finance, politics, and religious service. Their most famous legacy in brewing is the legendary dry stout beer known as Guinness, which was created by Arthur Guinness in 1759. As an Anglo-Irish Protestant family, they became integrated into the Irish Protestant Ascendancy beginning in the late 1700s.

The family's banking lineage traces back to Arthur's brother Samuel (1727–1795), who worked as a goldbeater in Dublin circa 1750. Samuel’s son Richard (1755–1830), a barrister based in Dublin, was the father of Robert Rundell Guinness, who established the financial firm Guinness Mahon in 1836.

Today, the family is headed by the Earl of Iveagh, with a prominent branch led by Lord Moyne, a descendant of the first Earl of Iveagh.

Origins

The Guinness lineage originates from Richard Guinness (born ), a native of Celbridge, who married Elizabeth Read (1698–1742), daughter of a farmer from Oughterard, County Kildare. Little is known about Richard’s ancestry, and numerous legends have complicated efforts to trace the family line further back. In 1959, Lord Moyne remarked that investigations into the family’s roots before Richard Guinness yielded no definitive conclusions, though some have speculated connections to the Magennis family of County Down and the Gennys family of Cornwall.

Traditionally, the Guinnesses are thought to descend from the Clan Magennis of Iveagh, an influential Irish-Gaelic noble family from County Down. The Magennis clan were Catholic Jacobites who participated in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. To bolster their heritage, the Guinness family has long asserted descent from the Magennis line, a claim supported by genealogist Sir Bernard Burke. The Rev. Hosea Guinness was granted a modified version of the Magennis coat of arms, and Edward Cecil Guinness adopted the title "Earl of Iveagh" in reference to this ancestry. An unverified and romanticized story suggested that Richard Guinness was an illegitimate son of Viscount Magennis.

In contrast, Patrick Guinness contested this narrative in his 2007 work Arthur's Round: The Life and Times of Brewing Legend Arthur Guinness, drawing on DNA analysis conducted by Trinity College Dublin. He proposes that the family actually descends from the Macartans, a lesser-known County Down clan subordinate to the Magennises, serving as followers and tenants rather than leaders. The surname likely originates from the townland named Guiness (Gion Ais in Irish), recorded in 1640 as belonging to Phelim Macartan.

Another less widely accepted hypothesis suggests that the Guinnesses derive from the Gennys family of Cornwall, minor landed gentry who settled in Ireland during the Cromwellian conquest in the 1650s. This theory posits that Richard Guinness might have been an illegitimate child of an English soldier and an Irish woman, with his surname evolving from St Gennys near Padstow. Henry Seymour Guinness of the banking branch supported this Cornish origin theory; however, Patrick Guinness rejects it due to potential partiality and insufficient evidence, although he acknowledges that Owen Guinnis could have been Richard’s father.

Prominent members

See also

Further reading

  • Martelli, G. Man of his Time (London, 1957)
  • Lynch, P. & Vaizey, J. Guinness's Brewery in the Irish Economy, 1759–1876 (Cambridge, 1960)
  • Mullally, Frederic. The Silver Salver: The Story of the Guinness Family (Granada, 1981)
  • Aalen, F. H. A. The Iveagh Trust: The First Hundred Years 1890–1990 (Dublin, 1990)
  • Guinness, J. Requiem for a Family Business (Macmillan, 1997)
  • Dennison, S. & MacDonagh, O. Guinness 1886–1939: From Incorporation to the Second World War (Cork University Press, 1998)
  • Wilson, D. Dark and Light (Weidenfeld, London, 1998)
  • Bryant, J. Kenwood: The Iveagh Bequest (English Heritage, 2004)
  • Guinness, P. Arthur's Round (Peter Owen, London, 2008)
  • Joyce, J. The Guinnesses (Poolbeg Press, Dublin, 2009)
  • Bourke, Edward J. The Guinness Story: The Family, the Business and the Black Stuff (O'Brien Press, 2009)
  • Smith, R. Guinness Down Under: The Famous Brew and the Family Come to Australia and New Zealand (Eyeglass Press, Tauranga, 2018)

External links

Retrieved from "https://www.alfawiki.org/index.php?title=Guinness_family&oldid=62397"