Norman Macbeth Jr., was born in Bolton, England in 1879, and grew up playing at Royal Lytham & St Annes golf club where he won the club championship three times while still in school. After an engineering apprenticeship in India with his father’s company he emigrated to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1903.
Norman married American Lucia Holliday in 1907, and they moved to Pittsburgh where Macbeth played on the Oakmont Golf Club Leslie Cup team with W.C. Fownes Jr., and on the 1909 Pennsylvania State golf team with Albert Tillinghast.
#1 son was John Holliday Macbeth born in 1908. He drowned in 1919 while Norman was in France working for the Red Cross during WW I.
The Macbeth’s moved to Los Angeles in 1910, with Norman working for the Riverside Portland Cement company. The company supplied cement for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and half the roads that we still drive on in the 21st century.
#2 son was Norman Macbeth III or Jr., born in Los Angeles in 1910. He was also a golf champion and lived until 1989.
Norman joined the Los Angeles Country Club and won numerous amateur golf titles over the next several years.
#3 son was Alexander born in 1915 and died in May 1920. Cause unknown.
Macbeth volunteered for the Red Cross in France, where he drove an ambulance, and managed to play at least one round of golf!
He returned to Los Angeles in August 1919, and was soon elected chairman of the Green committee creating the new Wilshire Country Club golf course in Hancock Park, which became his non-working life’s passion.
Norman was also playing a full schedule of club tournaments at Los Angeles Country Club where noted golf architect John Duncan Dunn was professional and George C. Thomas Jr., and Herbert Fowler were making history designing and building the new North and South courses.
Wilshire Country Club green committee.
The new Wilshire Country Club course was completed and open for member play in December 1920. Macbeth led the club team and green committee and was elected to the USGA Green Section. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.
Norman and Lucia had an uncontested divorce in 1928.
In 1934 Norman married Lucille Chandler, ex-wife of Wilshire CC founder Raymond Stephens. They were parents to Norman Jr., and Lucille’s son and daughter.
At the time of Norman’s death in 1940, he also left two brothers and five sisters in England.
J.I.B. Jones – January 2021.
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