Margaret MacArthur devoted nearly fifty years to gathering and performing the traditional songs of New England's laboring and agricultural communities. In 1985 the officials of the New England arts biennial committee recognized her as one of seven "living art treasures of New England."
Her first acquaintance with the oral tradition arrived through nursery rhymes her mother sang to her and cowboy songs delivered by her stepfather, a forest ranger, while she grew up in Arizona and Missouri's Ozark Mountains.
She married and settled in Vermont in 1948, where she maintained a modest rural household in a cabin without electricity or running water. Her engagement with folk music started when she offered music instruction at the school attended by her children Don, Gary and Megan. Local radio stations carried her performances regularly by 1951. Folk Songs of Vermont appeared as her debut album in 1961. Thereafter she turned her attention to the traditional songs and stories of the Green Mountain State on the albums Almanac of New England Farm Songs (1982), Vermont Ballads and Broadsides (1989), and Vermont Heritage Songs (1994).
Maine-based folk singer Gordon Bok supplied backup vocals and guitar accompaniment on her 1976 album The Old Songs. Members of her family joined her on four further releases: Make the Wildwoods Ring, MacArthur Road, On the Mountain High and Them Stars.
Between 1990 and 1991 she served as artist-in-residence for the Vermont Council of the Arts. With assistance from students at 21 schools, The Vermont Heritage Songbook was published in 1992.
