American Homecomers Visit Glasgow & Paisley

**cessna152towser** · 23rd May 09, 01:58 PM

Joyce from Oregon and her sister Madelyn from California, have Scots ancestry and are visiting their roots for a few days in this Year of the Homecoming. First port of call after I collected them from their hotel this morning was Houston Street, Glasgow. All the houses are long since demolished but part of the street still exists in an industrial/retail area, blocked off further along by new road development.

Next we visited Merryland Street, in Govan, one of Glasgow's western suburbs. The house they were looking for, number 32 had been demolished but here Joyce stands adjacent to where it would have stood, with number 36 in the background.

Success at last when we found 940 Govan Road, where Joyce and Madelyn's grandparents lived in one of the flats in this building in the early years of the twentieth century.

Turning the camera around and looking west along Govan Road, many of the late Victorian tenements still survive.

Tucked away down a lane off Govan Road we found Govan Old Parish Church where their grandparents had been married.
More to follow shortly.

**cessna152towser** · 23rd May 09, 02:05 PM

Continuing west to Paisley, the building where their ancestors lived in Queen Street had been demolished and replaced by modern apartments but the other side of the street retains much of its older character with the Bethany Hall built in the Victorian era, a row of nineteenth century houses and then the eighteenth century weaver's cottage where the poet Robert Tannahill lived from early infancy until his death in 1810.

A closer look at Tannahill's Cottage. The original thatched roof has been replaced by slates.

There is an 1878 datestone on 8 Broomlands Street, Paisley, so this would have been a new building at the time of the 1881 census when Joyce and Madelyn's great-grandparents are listed in census records as living in one of the flats in this tenement.

We went to the Watermill Hotel for lunch. It is a converted seventeenth century flour mill.

Dining in the Watermill Hotel

Cementing relations between Scotland and the United States of America.
Wearing my USA semi-trad Hunting MacLeod. Joyce and Madelyn mentioned that one of their male relatives had recently received his first kilt which he is very excited about, I wonder if he has posted on this forum.
More pics to follow.

**cessna152towser** · 23rd May 09, 02:18 PM

Joyce and Madelyn presented me with a braw 'Merican watch.

After I had seen Joyce and Madelyn off on the train on the next section of their Scottish tour I called in at the Glasgow South Side festival, being held in Queen's Park where Ann and I had done some of our courting.

Non-trad kilts are not as common in Scotland as tartan kilts. Spotted at the festival, I'd guess from the reverse glengarry pleating that this fellow was wearing a Utilikilt. I never got a chance to speak to him, I wonder if he posts on xmarksthescot.

The Corporation of Glasgow handed over their municipal bus services to a private operator years ago, but they transferred a few buses to the city museum's department which retain the old city transport colours and are brought out for special occasions. This was a type of bus I often travelled on while I was a student at Glasgow University from 1969 to 1973. It was just about to leave the festival to return to its garage in the east end of the city and I hitched a ride.

The bus went along Victoria Road and past the site of the Plaza Ballroom where I first met my wife Ann. The ballroom has been demolished and replaced by this apartment block called The Plaza.

Travelling up Stockwell Street in the city centre inside a corporation bus, haven't done this for many years!

The bus dropped me off outside its depot at Fordneuk Street, in Bridgeton, in the east end of Glasgow, a fitting place to end this photoset as a branch of my father's family lived in Bridgeton where they were employed in the carpet weaving trade.