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The members of Clan Grant are talented, creative, and highly esteemed, having achieved great things in fields ranging from business, to journalism, to cinema.
Meet the Famous Grants
William Grant
If you are a whisky fan, you’ll be particularly interested in our first famous face for today!
William Grant was a Scottish distiller and keen entrepreneur who founded the company William Grant & Sons, the first brand to widely sell a true single malt whisky, which is still loved to this day.
Born in 1839 in Dufftown, Moray, Grant showed an industrious spirit from a very early age. At only 7 years old, he began herding his family’s cattle, before starting work as an apprentice shoemaker, and spending time processing limestone.
Impressively, alongside all this hard work, he also managed to gain a thorough education, helping him get a job as a bookkeeper at a local distillery in 1866. While there, he fostered a great love for whisky production, observing and learning all that he could. He stayed for 20 years, working his way up to become the manager.
He saved his earnings until he had enough in 1886 to quit and achieve his dream of starting his own distillery.
He bought land, material, and equipment, and worked with his 9 children to set up Glenfiddich Distillery. After a year of hard work, Glenfiddich produced its first drink on Christmas day of 1887.
Their whisky proved to be so popular that Grant was able to open a second distillery just 5 years later, in 1892, named the Balvenie. Grant’s son in law, Charles Gordon, became the company’s first salesman and took on the task of marketing their product to the public.
In 1909, he began travelling extensively to take Glenfiddich all over the world, with great success. By 1914, he had set up distribution networks in 30 countries! The business continued to build on their international reputation, and today, they export to an impressive 180 countries.
William Grant passed away in 1923, but his legacy has endured, along with the popularity of his creation. William Grant & Sons also continue to stand out as inventors and innovators within the distilling industry. In 2009, they opened the Ailsa Bay Distillery. Ailsa Bay was the first kind of Scotch whisky to undergo a process called ‘micro maturation.’ In recent years, they have also led the way in producing low and no alcohol whiskies, allowing even more people to enjoy their iconic products.
Cary Grant
Our next famous face of Clan Grant has also brought joy to many lives, though this time through the power of film!
Cary Grant (Archibald Leach) was born on the 18th of January 1904, in Bristol, England. His early childhood was challenging, as his father struggled with alcoholism, and his mother suffered from severe mental health issues.
Performing was an escape for the young Grant, and when he was just 14, he left school and forged his father’s signature on a form to join Bob Pender’s troupe of acrobats and comedians. In 1920, he was one of a few members of the group chosen to go to the United Sates, where he performed on Broadway in the show ‘Good Times.’
His natural charisma and comedic timing caught the eye of several prestigious Hollywood studios, and in 1932, he signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. He began his career with dramas and thrillers, but became best-known for his romantic comedies, particularly ‘The Awful Truth,’ ‘Bringing up Baby,’ and ‘His Girl Friday.’
However, he certainly wasn’t a one trick pony, as he also took many opportunities to explore more complex plots and intricate characters, notably in his collaborations with renowned director Alfred Hitchcock.
Grant retired from acting in 1966, having achieved indisputable legendary status. In the years following his retirement, his contribution to Hollywood was recognised with several awards, including an Honorary Academy Award in 1970.
In the 1980s, Grant performed several tours of the US with his show ‘A Conversation with Cary Grant,’ which gave audiences the opportunity to ask the star questions.
Grant is remembered now as one of the greatest figures of cinema, even being named the second male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999.
Perhaps watching a few of his classic films would be a good way to honour the great Clan Grant and their spectacular achievements!
Jane Grant
Our final famous face for today had a great impact on journalism and was a fierce advocate for women’s right to work.
Jane Grant was born on the 29th of May 1892 in Missouri, USA. Her earliest passion in life was music, and she moved to New York City at the age of 16 to train as a singer, but soon fell into journalism instead.
She joined The New York Times as their first female reporter and built a niche in interviewing women who worked in male-dominated fields.
During the second world war, Grant returned to her old love for performing and joined a troopship to France as part of the entertainment crew. While in France, she met Harold Ross, who she would marry in 1920. However, she was so proud of her ‘Grant’ name that she was determined to keep it!
In 1921, she helped to set up the Lucy Stone League, which aimed to support women in keeping their maiden names when they married.
While she was clearly fiercely independent, Grant and Ross’s partnership was undeniably fruitful, as in 1925 they set up The New Yorker together. Grant worked hard on the publication, acting mainly as an editor and content consultant. She recruited her friend Janet Flanner to write the much-loved ‘Letter from Paris’ column, which is still featured in the magazine today!
Grant and Ross divorced in 1929 after 9 years of marriage, but the legacy of their relationship continues in the popularity of The New Yorker.
Over the following decades, Grant wrote for a number of magazines. One of her most notable works was ‘Confessions of a Feminist,’ published by American Mercury in 1943, in which she described her experience as a woman reporter, exploring various discriminatory laws and practices that made the field difficult for women.
She continued to advocate for gender equality throughout her life, passionately supporting the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment and serving on the National Council of Women in the 1960s.
She also experienced more joy in her personal life, marrying William B. Harris, the editor of Fortune magazine, and moving with him from Manhattan to Litchfield, Connecticut, to enjoy the peace of rural life.
Grant died in 1972, but she received several posthumous honours, and her husband carried out a range of good work in her name. In 1974, the University of Oregon approached Harris to discuss a potential endowment. He visited the campus and subsequently agreed to fund a centre focused on research into women and gender studies, recognising Grant’s great passion for the subject. In 1976, he also donated all of Grant’s academic papers to the university, making her work available to future potential scholars.
What’s more, he left a $3.5 million donation in Grant’s name in his will to establish the Centre for the Study of Women in Society.
Grant’s life and achievements undoubtably serves as a great inspiration to scholars, journalists, and feminists alike.
We certainly feel inspired having discovered the brilliant talents of Clan Grant and hope you do, too!
If you would like to learn more about this mighty clan, head over to our Clan Grant page, and make sure to keep an eye out for the rest of our content to come this month.
Image Sources:
View of Glenfiddich Distillery by Coldupnorth - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
RKO publicity still from Suspicion (1941) by Grant,_Cary_(Suspicion)_01.jpg: RKO publicity photographer.derivative work: Crisco 1492 (talk) - This file was derived from: Grant, Cary (Suspicion) 01.jpg:, Public Domain
Jane Grant by Unknown author - http://libweb.uoregon.edu/speccoll/xhibits.html, Public Domain
