The Last of the Clan McDuck

The Last of the Clan McDuck is a Scrooge McDuck comic by Don Rosa. It is the first of the original 12 chapters in the series The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. The story takes place from 1877 to 1880 when Scrooge is a child. He comes in conflict with The Whiskervilles, earns his Number One Dime and heads for the United States on a cattle boat.

It is the first appearance of Scrooge's mother Downy O'Drake. Scrooge's Uncle Jake McDuck appears for the first time in this story even though he was mentioned in A Christmas for Shacktown.

When Don Rosa first wrote this story it was right after he wrote Of Ducks Dimes and Destinies.

Plot
As a child, Scrooge grows up in a poor family that has a rivalry with the Whiskervilles clan. When he gets his first job as a shoe shiner, his first customer presents him with extremely filthy shoes, but pays him with an American coin (a dime). Furious at being cheated, Scrooge becomes much more cunning and gets more business. He later earns more money first by selling firewood and then by selling peat moss.

Family legend meanwhile states that the McDuck family was heir to a castle and large fortune. One of their ancestors, determined to hide the treasure from thieves, sealed it away inside the castle (accidentally sealing himself away at the same time). The family was frightened from the land by a "phantom wolf" and as a result the treasure was lost and the castle fell to ruin. While exploring the castle, Scrooge discovers that the "wolf" was actually a trick from The Whiskervilles, who wanted the McDuck family out of the way so that they could steal the hidden treasure. Encouraged by a strange duck in the castle, Scrooge gets revenge for his family by filling a suit of armor with peat and setting it on fire, tricking The Whiskervilles into thinking it was a ghost. At the advice of the duck, Scrooge decides to go to America to earn his fortune. After he left the castle, it was revealed that the duck was the ghost of the ancestor who was sealed away in the wall. When asked by the ghosts of the other ancestors why he didn't simply just show Scrooge the location of the treasure, he explains that the boy must earn his fortune himself.