Margaret Crowl MacArthur (7 May 1928 – 23 May 2006) was an American singer and player of the MacArthur Harp and lap dulcimer.
Biography
Margaret Crowl MacArthur was born in Chicago. As a youth, she travelled with her family in South Carolina, California, Louisiana, and Arizona. Her step-father had other children out of wedlock, which was a significant strain on Crowl’s early life. Her family nickname would become “Toodles.”
Crowl remembered that at the age of five, she heard cowboys on the timber crew singing folk songs in the Tonto National Forest. Later in life she would become a collector of Native American artwork.
Crowl studied at Chicago University. In 1948 she married John MacArthur and moved to Newfane, Vermont. She remained in Vermont for the rest of her life. In 1951 the couple moved into a 200-year-old farmhouse in Marlboro, Vermont without electricity. In preparation for the move, she bought "Country Songs of Vermont" (1937) by Helen Hartness Flanders. It became the model for her future folk-song collecting. MacArthur volunteered to teach music at the school her children attended. She found old ballads appealing and she sought out traditional singers in the Vermont area. By 1951 she had performed several times on local radio.
