Old Photograph Glenlee House Scotland

Old photograph of Glenlee House by Dalry in North Ayrshire, Scotland. A Grey Lady haunts this house. She is thought to be the ghost of Lady Ashburton who poisoned her husband before being poisoned by the butler.



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Old Photograph Knocknalling House Scotland

Old photograph of Knocknalling House located near Dalry in North Ayrshire, Scotland. John Kennedy was born in 1769 in Knocknalling. In 1784 he moved to Chowbent, near Leigh in Lancashire, England, to be apprenticed to William Cannan, the son of a neighbour of the Kennedys. His training covered the manufacture of textile machinery including carding engines, jennies, and water frames. On the completion of his apprenticeship in 1791, he moved to Manchester and went into a long-lasting partnership with James McConnel, a nephew and former apprentice of Cannan, to manufacture textile machinery and undertake cotton spinning. Benjamin and William Sandford provided the financial backing. Kennedy was a skilled and inventive engineer and is credited with devising a crucial improvement to fine-spinning machinery, called double speed, which enabled much finer thread to be manufactured. He died in 1855 at Ardwick Hall, Manchester, and was buried at the nearby Rusholme Road cemetery. He was succeeded by several children, including barrister John L. Kennedy, who immigrated in 1874 to the United States and settled and farmed in LaSalle County, Illinois before attending Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in 1879 and then graduating from the law department of the University of Iowa in Iowa City in 1882. He passed the bar and briefly set up practice in Omaha, Nebraska being elected as a Republican to the Fifty-ninth United States Congress. He served from March 4, 1905 to March 3, 1907, unsuccessfully running for re-election in 1906. He was the Federal fuel administrator for Nebraska from October 1917 to March 1919. He was also the president of the United States National Bank from 1920 to 1925 and president of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce in 1924 and 1925. He retired in January 1933 and moved to Pacific Palisades, California, where he died August 30, 1946. He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.



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Old Photograph Lagwine Castle Scotland

Old photograph of Lagwine Castle located about a quarter of a mile north of Carsphairn in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. This was the residence of the McAdams of Waterhead from which family John Loudon McAdam, the Scottish engineer and road builder, came. He was the son of James McAdam and Susanna Cochrane, the niece of the 7th Earl of Dundonald. John Loudon was the youngest of 10 children, but the only surviving male from the main line of the Waterhead family. His older brother, James was a Captain in the military and died in the South Seas when John was about 7 or 8 years old. John was born in Ayr, in Lady Cathcart's house in the Sandgate, on September 21, 1756. The McAdam of Waterhead's residence at that time was Lord Carthcart's house in Ayr until 1760 when the family built a new residence and moved to Lagwyie. The castle was part of the property on the Waterhead estate. James McAdam had moved the family residence from Waterhead to Lagwine because it was more accessible. Shortly after the family moved into the new residence at Lagwine it burnt to the ground. James and Susanna were away on business in Edinburgh when the Castle burnt down. A fire from the fireplace is said to have started the fire. John Loudon narrowly escaped the fire only to be rescued by the family nurse. James McAdam did not rebuild the Lagwyne Castle and moved the family to Blairquhan or sometimes called the Whitefoord Castle, near Straiton. He leased the Castle from Sir John Whiteford. Whitefoord Castle since has been demolished and replaced by the present Blaiquhan Castle.



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Old Photograph Earlston Castle Scotland

Old photograph of Earlston Castle located North of Dalry in North Ayrshire, Scotland. In the 16th century Earlstoun belonged to the Sinclairs, passing to the Gordons in the late 16th or early 17th century when this house was be erected, probably on the site of an earlier stronghold.



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Old Photograph Parish Church Dalry Scotland

Old photograph of the Parish Church in Dalry in North Ayrshire, Scotland. Dalry was mentioned in 1226 as a " chapel of Ardrossan ". The parish of Dalry was probably formed in 1279 when a " Henry, Rector of the Church of Dalry " appears in the Register of the Diocese of Glasgow. Lands including the area of Pitcon in Dalry were given by Robert the Bruce to his right hand man Robert Boyd in 1316. On the 8th Nov 1576, midwife Bessie Dunlop, resident of Lynne, in Dalry, was accused of sorcery and witchcraft. She answered her accusers that she received information on prophecies or to the whereabouts of lost goods from a Thomas Reid, a former barony officer in Dalry who died at the Battle of Pinkie some 30 years before. She convicted and burnt at the stake at Castle Hill in Edinburgh in 1576. Various manufacturing existed in the parish relating to cotton and carpet yarn with silk and harness weaving, in which both men and women were employed.A significant number of women were occupied in sewing and embroidering, mainly for the Glasgow and Paisley manufacturers. The dressing and spinning of flax to some extent was also done in the area.



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