Printer and publisher, Archibald Macdougall may have arrived in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) with his brother John Campbell Macdougall also a printer and publisher. John Campbell Macdougall followed his father, John Macdougall, a merchant and agent who arrived in 1821.
Archibald Macdougall was associated with the Launceston Advertiser in the mid 1830s. A column about the new Southern Australian newspaper, published in the Launceston Advertiser on the 7 June 1838, notes: ‘Mr. A. Macdougall, formerly in the office of this Journal, is the publisher of the new [Southern Australian] ... It could not have been in better hands.’
Archibald Macdougall arrived in Adelaide, South Australia from Launceston or Hobart in March or May 1838 with a printing press. He printed and published the Southern Australian from 2 June 1838 to 25 April 1843. Macdougall also printed and published the South Australian Magazine from July 1841 to September 1842 and printed and published monographs. In 1840 Macdougall was awarded the government printing contract for South Australia. However he was made bankrupt when the government dishonoured a bill for nearly £1,000.
At the end of the 1840s Archibald Macdougall left Adelaide and returned to Van Diemen's Land. The Macdougall Family Archives notes that he managed the Colonial Times newspaper in Hobart Town for his sister-in-law, Mary Ann Macdougall, while continuing to print and publish monographs.
Mary Ann Macdougall published the Times after the death, in 1848, of her husband John Campbell Macdougall until she sold the newspaper in February 1855. This may have prompted Archibald Macdougall's move to Victoria in the mid 1850s. In Victoria he was associated with suburban newspapers, possibly including the St Kilda and Prahran Advertiser. He died at his residence in Eastbourne Street, Windsor, on 2 April 1870.
Sources: 'SA Newspapers: Early History'. SA Memory: South Australia: Past and Present, for the Future. Web. Sighted 28/10/2014; ‘Treasures of the State Library : Information Having Been Received by the Rapid’, SA Memory: South Australia: Past and Present, for the Future. Web. Sighted 28/10/2014; Macdougall Family Archives. Web. 28 October 2014; ‘Untitled’, Launceston Advertiser (7 June 1838): 3
