Pioneer Information
Born at Thorn Hill in Scotland, McClunie studied at Edinburgh University and served briefly as an engineer in an early study of the Panama Canal. In 1850 he moved to New York City and in 1857 relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, where he prepared an unrealized plan for Bushnell Park. During the Civil War he served in the Seventh Rhode Island Infantry and was wounded in the Battle of Fredericksburg. Returning to Hartford in 1870, McClunie laid out Charles Pond’s estate (now Elizabeth Park). In 1876 he designed the grounds for the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane (now Connecticut Valley Hospital) in Middletown and exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In 1881 he designed a portion of the city’s Spring Grove Cemetery and graded the State Capitol grounds. As late as 1889 he advertised his services in preparing “plans and specifications for parks, cemeteries and private residences.” Two of his sons, Alex McClunie and Thomas R. McClunie were floral and landscape designers, and laid out Sigourney Square Park in Hartford (1895) and Coe Memorial Park (1908) in Torrington, Connecticut, respectively. McClunie died in 1903 and is buried in Hartford’s Cedar Hill Cemetery.
