Old Photograph Dollar Monument Falkirk Scotland

Old photograph of the Dollar Monument in Falkirk, Scotland. Falkirk is situated in the Forth Valley, almost midway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Captain Robert Dollar, born 1844, died 1932 was a Scots American industrialist born in Bainsford, Falkirk. The title " Captain " was honorary and he was called the “ Grand Old Man of the Pacific ". Both were bestowed after his entry into the shipping industry. Dollar became a lumber baron, shipping magnate, philanthropist; he was also a Freemason. He was born on 20 March 1844, to William Dollar and Mary Melville. He was the oldest of three boys that included brothers John and James. His mother died in 1853, and Robert dropped out of school and worked in a machine shop and then as an errand boy for a lumber shipping company to help support the family. After the death of Robert's mother, his father married a servant girl named Mary Easton, and in 1857 they had a daughter, also named Mary. Shortly afterwards, the family emigrated to Canada. Robert began working at a lumber camp as a cook's helper when he was 14 years old, and later found work in a barrel stave factory. He learned French, and worked his way up to doing the camp accounting. Robert met Margaret S. Proudfoot in a Presbyterian Church, and they were married in 1874. They had four children: Alexander Melville and Robert Stanley were born in Bracebridge. The timber was playing out, so in 1885 the family moved to Marquette, Michigan, where Mary Grace and John Harold were born. In 1888, the family moved to San Rafael, California, and Robert bought timberland and logging camps in Sonoma, a mill and lumber business at Usal in Mendocino county, and other places such as Oregon and as far north as British Columbia. In 1895, he acquired his first vessel, a single steam schooner called Newsboy, to move his lumber from the Pacific Northwest to markets down the coast.

Robert Dollar had interests in China that included land, buildings, and wharves for his ships. The Dollar Steamship Line had offices in Alexandria, Egypt, Manila and Zamboanga, Philippines, Genoa, Italy, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, CA, Oakland, CA, and Portland, OR. The company had wharves on the West Coast at Bandon and Reedsport, OR, Seattle, WA, and Honolulu, HI; on the East Coast at Boston, MA, New York, NY, and Washington, D.C.; on the Great Lakes at Cleveland, OH, Toronto, ON; Chicago, Ill; in Asia, at Kobe and Yokahama, Japan, at Shanghai, Hankow, Tientsin, Yangtze River, Tayeh, and Wuchang, China; at Havana, Cuba, and at Naples, Italy.



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