Andrew Maitland-Makgill-Crichton was born on 28 December 1910, the eldest son of Lieutenant Colonel David Edward Maitland-Makgill-Crichton (1879–1952) and his wife, Phyllis (died 1982), daughter of Claude Arthur Cuthbert, of Bryn Garth in Herefordshire. His brother David drowned in 1941, while serving in World War II; another brother, Edward, was an army officer and rose to the rank of major-general; of his two sisters, Katherine Grizel married a doctor and moved to the United States, and Jean Beatrice married the second Baron Morris. A paternal uncle, Henry, was a brigadier in the army.Mosley, Charles (2003), Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage (Wilmington, Delaware: Burke's Peerage and Gentry), vol. 2, p. 2568 In 1948, Andrew Crichton married Isabel (died 1997), a daughter of Andrew Joseph McGill and a widow of John Eric Bain; the marriage produced no children.
