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JOHN GLASSFORD
JOHN GLASSFORD, of Dougalston and Whitehill. - Mr. Glassford was a native of Paisley; his father, James Glassford, was a merchant and magistrate in that town. John Glassford early in the last century entered into the Virginia trade, and rose rapidly till he became one of the foremost amongst the merchant princes of Glasgow. At that time the Virginia trade took up the greater share of the capital of the city. Mr. Glassford was owner of twenty-five ships, and it was believed that he passed money through his hands yearly to the extent of half a million sterling. His commercial transactions were not confined to the Virginia trade, but almost all the principal manufacturing establishments in the town had his support. He was a leading partner in the Glasgow Arms and Thistle banks. He held shares in the Glasgow Tanwork Co., and also in the Dyeing and Calico Printing Co. established at Pollokshaws by Provost Ingram, one of the oldest and most prosperous businesses of its kind in Scotland; and he was one of the principal promoters of the Cudbear manufacture conducted by George Macintosh & Co. He built, in the eastern suburb of the city, the spacious mansion of Whitehill, which, with its thirty acres of garden, and pleasure ground, he surrounded by a high wall. He drove daily to this residence in a coach and four. He purchased the estate of Dougalston, from which he took his title; and he had for his town residence the Shawfield mansion, with its splendid garden, where Glassford Street now stands. In this house he dispensed princely hospitality, and there he died in 1783. The able authors of that valuable volume, "The Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry", say:- "Mr. Glassford lived high, and he married high - a baronet's daughter, and then an earl's. He bought more land, he entailed, and he died, having done his best to found a family that should keep his name alive; but it all came to nothing. The Cuninghames, the Speirs, and the Ritchies, are still conspicuous among our landed gentry. The Glassfords are gone. Their heirs are seeking to found a fortune on the other side of the globe, and Dougalston has passed to a merchant of our own day, enriched by trade to distant markets that John Glassford probably never heard of, but yet helped to open up." In glancing over the memorial tablets which record the names of those who are laid in the old Ramshorn kirk yard, there are none of them so suggestive of mutation as one standing in the south-west corner, which tells the family history of John Glassford, at one time the very prince of Glasgow merchants, and now almost forgotten, the very stone which tells his story displaying an embodiment of neglect, decay, and desolation.
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