Editing Gregor MacGregor (section)

==Return to Venezuela and death==
[[File:Joseph Thomas 1839 000.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|[[Caracas]], where MacGregor spent his last years, as painted by Joseph Thomas in 1839|alt=An exotic New World city, viewed from atop a nearby hill]]
Josefa MacGregor died at [[Burghmuirhead]], near Edinburgh, on 4 May 1838.{{sfn|Brown|2006|pp=54–55}} MacGregor almost immediately left for Venezuela, where he resettled in Caracas and in October 1838 applied for citizenship and restoration to his former rank in the Venezuelan Army, with back pay and a pension.{{sfn|Dawson|2004}}{{sfn|Brown|2006|pp=54–55}} He stressed his travails on Venezuela's behalf two decades earlier and asserted that Bolívar, who had died in 1830, had effectively deported him; he described several unsuccessful requests to return and being {{nowrap|"[forced}} to] remain outside the Republic&nbsp;... by causes and obstacles out of my control" while losing his wife, two children and "the best years of my life and all my fortune".{{sfn|Brown|2006|pp=54–55}}{{#tag:ref|MacGregor's children seem to have stayed in Scotland. His daughter Josefa died there in 1872 leaving two sons, neither of whom had children. No record survives regarding what became of Gregorio and Constantino MacGregor.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|p=308}}|group="n"|name="children"}}

The Defence Minister [[Rafael Urdaneta]], who had served alongside MacGregor during the Aux Cayes expedition of 1816, asked the Senate to look upon the Scotsman's application favourably as he had "enlisted in our ranks from the very start of the War of Independence, and ran the same risks as all the patriots of that disastrous time, meriting promotions and respect because of his excellent personal conduct" — MacGregor's contributions had been "heroic with immense results". President [[José Antonio Páez]], another former revolutionary comrade, approved the application in March 1839.{{sfn|Brown|2006|pp=54–55}}

MacGregor was duly confirmed as a Venezuelan citizen and divisional general in the Venezuelan Army, with a pension of one-third of his salary. He settled in the capital and became a respected member of the local community. After his death at home in Caracas on 4 December 1845, he was buried with full military honours in [[Caracas Cathedral]],{{sfn|Dawson|2004}} with President [[Carlos Soublette]], Cabinet ministers and the military chiefs of Venezuela marching behind his coffin. Obituaries in the Caracas press extolled General MacGregor's "heroic and triumphant retreat" to Barcelona in 1816 and described him as "a valiant champion of independence".{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=328–329}} "There was not a word about Amelia Island, Porto Bello or Rio de la Hacha, and there was no reference to the Cazique of Poyais", Sinclair concludes.{{sfn|Sinclair|2004|pp=328–329}} The part of today's Honduras that was supposedly called Poyais remains undeveloped in the 21st century. Back in Scotland, at the MacGregor graveyard near Loch Katrine, the clan memorial stones make no mention of Gregor MacGregor or the country he invented.{{sfn|The Economist|2012}}