Tour Scotland short 4K travel video clip, with music, of the West Lighthouse on ancestry, genealogy, family history visit to Tayport, North East Fife. Located on the south shore of the Firth of Tay, opposite Dundee, and north west of Tayport, the the white tower which comprises the West Lighthouse, also known as the High Light, was built in 1823 by noted lighthouse engineer Robert Stevenson, born 1772, died 1850. Robert Stevenson was born in Glasgow. His father was Alan Stevenson, a partner in a West Indies sugar trading house in the city. Alan died of an epidemic fever on the island of St. Christopher in the West Indies on 26 May 1774, a few days before Robert's second birthday. Robert's uncle died of the same disease around the same time. Since this left Alan's widow, Jean Lillie Stevenson, in much reduced financial circumstances, Robert was educated, as a young child, at a charity school. Robert's mother intended him to join the ministry, so when he was a bit older she enrolled him in the school of a locally famous Glasgow linguist, a Mr. Macintyre. But when Robert was 15, she remarried and the family moved to 1 Blair Street, off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh. Robert's new stepfather was Thomas Smith, a tinsmith, lamp maker, ingenious mechanic, and civil engineer, who had been appointed to the newly formed Northern Lighthouse Board in 1786. In 1797, he was appointed engineer to the Lighthouse Board, succeeding to his stepfather's place there. In 1799, he married Smith's eldest daughter Jean, who was also his stepsister, and, in 1800, Smith made him his business partner. In 1815, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was inducted into the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame in 2016. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day
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