This is a small corner of the internet for the McGaw family.
The name is an old one. Scottish and Irish in origin, anglicized from the Gaelic over many centuries, with deep roots in the southwest of Scotland and in northern Ireland. McGaws have been traders and farmers, soldiers and scholars, surgeons and engineers, athletes and adventurers. The name has scattered across the world — to North America, to the British Isles, across continental Europe, and to wherever the work and the wandering took us. Centuries of migration and intermarriage have woven the McGaw line into many other family stories along the way.
Ours is a family that has rarely stayed in one place for long. The branch behind this site came through New England in the twentieth century and from there onward — to the Philippines, to India, to the Middle East, to Africa, and to wherever else the next chapter happened to be. Eric Malcolm McGaw (1948–2016), the father of the keeper of this site, lived on four continents and worked in agricultural communications across more countries than most people visit in a lifetime. His children carry that wandering forward.
This is who we are: a globetrotting, closeknit family, proud of the name and of the people who came before us. We've climbed mountains together (literally — three generations of McGaws are on the Appalachian Mountain Club's permanent rolls for completing New Hampshire's 48 peaks above four thousand feet). We've raced for the Philippines at international rowing championships. We've founded running clubs that are still going thirty-six years later. We've stood alongside Norman Borlaug and Kofi Annan. We've raised children across cultures and languages and continents. We've made homes in places far from where we started.
This site is for the McGaws
If you are a McGaw — whether of this branch or another, whether the name is yours by birth or by marriage or by some twist of family history we haven't yet uncovered — this site is for you, too.
The longer purpose here is to build something that lasts: a hub where McGaws can find each other, where stories are gathered and preserved, where photographs and memories accumulate, where the family tree grows out and back through the generations. A place that exists not for one branch of the family but for all of them.
If you are a McGaw who would like to be part of this — to contribute a story, share photographs, correct an error, fill in a gap, or just say hello — we would love to hear from you. Reach out at webmaster AT mcgaw DOT me.
The McGaw line goes back further than any one of us. It will go on after us. This site is one small way of honoring that.
