Eldest son of a successful merchant family, Dennistoun was educated at Glasgow Grammar School and the College of Glasgow. In 1820 he was sent to New Orleans, where his father and uncle had a branch of their cotton trade business. On his return to Britain, he lived in Cheshire and took charge of the Liverpool branch. He later spent several years in France before returning to Glasgow.
Dennistoun was a director of the Union Bank of Scotland and served as a member of parliament for Dumbarton in 1834, having stood as a Liberal. After the death of his wife in 1847, he alternated between his Glasgow home in Golfhill and Lagarie, on the Gareloch.
His name is chiefly remembered as the founder, in 1861, of the Glasgow district of Dennistoun, an area of tenements and villas in the east end of the city.
ABOUT the end of the last century, and during the first third of the present one, no man in Glasgow was better known or more highly esteemed than James Dennistoun of Golfhill. He had been born in Campsie parish in 1752. In 1781 we hear of him as an enterprising and successful manufacturer in Glasgow, and soon afterwards, in conjunction with his brother Alexander, he established the firm of J. & A. Dennistoun, which in process of time became one of the greatest of our Glasgow mercantile houses, with branches at Liverpool, New Orleans, Havre de Grace, and subsequently at New York, Melbourne, and London. James Dennistoun made the first shipment of goods ever made direct from the Clyde to New Orleans, loading a brig and clearing 100 per cent. profit on the cargo; and his firm was the earliest British firm established at that port. About 1786 he married Mary, daughter of William Finlay of The Moss, Stirlingshire, a cousin of the well-known Kirkman Finlay, M.P. for Glasgow. Alexander Dennistoun was the eldest son of this marriage, and he was born in 1790. There was a second son, William, who died young; a third, James, who married a daughter of Mr. Gordon of Milrig but died without issue. The fourth son was John, as to whom we shall have something more to say, and there were two daughters, one of whom married Mr. Walter Wood, but died childless; and the other married Mr. John Wood, and her grandson is the John Walter Cross who married the celebrated authoress, George Eliot, and is the author of her memoirs. James Dennistoun, by a second marriage, had three daughters, one of whom married MacDowall of Garthland.
We find that in 1809, in conjunction with the Lord Kinnaird of that day, Walter Fergus, Kirkcaldy; W. B. Cabbell, London; John Baxter, Dundee, and a few other influential merchants, James Dennistoun founded the latest of the private Banks of Issue in Scotland, under the name of The Glasgow Bank. It was soon after joined by James Oswald of Shieldhall, James Ewing of Strathleven, James Buchanan of Dowanhill, and Henry Monteith of Carstairs. Many will still remember its original brown note with the city arms, and signed by W. B. Cabbell, the cashier, and Robert Brown, the accountant. That note had to be withdrawn on account of forgeries, and a more artistically engraved one was substituted. The office was at the west corner of Montrose Street and Ingram Street, and is now occupied by the City Sanitary Department. There, and at its one solitary branch at Kirkcaldy, it for many years carried out a most successful business, under the able management of James Dennistoun. He retired in 1829, and on the occasion the merchants of Glasgow entertained him at a magnificent banquet in the great hall of the Royal Exchange, then just opened, a compliment of no mean significance in proving the high esteem in which he was held. His portrait was also painted on their behalf by Graham Gilbert, R..S.A., and still hangs in the directors' room of the Union Bank, while a replica, which was given to Lord Provost Dalglish at the time, has been bequeathed by the late Robert Dalglish, M.P., to the family. Engravings of that picture are still far from uncommon in the houses of our older citizens. James Dennistoun died in 1835.
Many still remember him as the very best type of a British merchant of the old time; high-minded and honourable in all his dealings; prudent, yet enterprising and successful. He enjoyed intimate friendship with Edward Irving, and with Dr. Chalmers whose work in the east end of Glasgow he warmly backed; also with the leading Whigs of the day, such as Brougham, Cockburn, and Jeffrey, for he was a keen politician, and spent his money freely in promoting the Reform Bill of 1832, a cause which he had much at heart. For his services in that way, Earl Grey offered him a baronetcy, but to his credit he declined it, lest it might be thought he had been working for selfish ends.
His sons, Alexander and John, had long since grown up and had taken leading places in the firm of J. & A. Dennistoun. Both of them had been educated at the Grammar School and the College of Glasgow. About 1820 Alexander resided in New Orleans, where the firm had established a branch to facilitate their trade in cotton. On his return to this country, he took charge of the Liverpool branch, and resided in Cheshire. Those who remember him only in his later day, with frock coat and malacca cane, quietly pacing the floor of Glasgow Exchange, with his staid demeanour and kindly greeting for every one, will hardly realize the ardent youth who was a keen sportsman, a capital shot, and hunted regularly with the Ayrshire, the Lanarkshire, and the Cheshire hounds, and even gained hunters' stakes on Chester course with owners up, but so it was. At that time, also, he was engaged in friendly rivalry with William Cobbett in agricultural pursuits, particularly in the raising of root crops, which were then comparatively in their infancy.
In 1823 he married Eleanor Jane, youngest daughter of John Thomson of Nassau, New Providence, and a few years after went to Havre, where there was a branch of the house in charge of George Anderson, father of our present M.P. On leaving Havre, where he had resided with his family for a year or two, Alexander Dennistoun went to Paris, where he was during the revolution of 1830, after which he returned to Glasgow, residing at Germiston and other places, till on the death of his father he took up his residence at Golfhill. This event also made both brothers largely interested in the Glasgow Bank. In 1836 that Bank formed an amalgamation with the old Ship Bank, of which Michael Rowand was the principal partner. It now became the Glasgow and Ship Bank, and to meet the needs of the united business, they pulled down the mansion at the head of Virginia Street, which James Dennistoun had bought for the Bank in 1828, with a view to a new office, and erected on its site the most stately establishment then in Glasgow. But the expansion of business was rapidly outgrowing the system of private Banks, and joint stock Banks were to take their place. The Dennistouns, and other directors and shareholders of the Glasgow and Ship, were not slow to see the advantage of going with the times. Already the Glasgow Union Bank, a joint stock company, had absorbed the old Thistle Bank, Sir William Forbes & Co., the Paisley Union, and one or two other smaller concerns, and in 1843 a far more important amalgamation was arranged; the Glasgow Union joined the Glasgow and Ship in their new office, under the name of the Union Bank of Scotland, and so became the powerful institution now existing, Alexander Dennistoun, both before and after the junction, being frequently a director.
In 1834, shortly before the death of his father, Alexander Dennistoun was returned to Parliament for the County of Dunbarton, defeating Alexander Smollett of Bonhill. But though always a keen and thoughtful politician, he did not take kindly to Parliamentary life, and gave it up when that Parliament was dissolved, never again trying for a seat. In 1847 Mrs. Dennistoun died at Golfhill, leaving him with a large family. Here he continued to reside, alternating for summer quarters the beautiful villa of Lagarie, on the Gareloch, for the remainder of a long, peaceful, and generally prosperous life. The only serious check to that prosperity occurred in the terrible panic of November, 1857, when, partly through the failure of the Borough Bank of Liverpool, in which the Dennistouns were large shareholders, partly through the crisis in America, the great firm had to suspend payment, with liabilities exceeding three millions sterling. None who were in business in Glasgow then will ever forget the day; distrust was universal and panic reigned supreme. As regarded the Dennistouns, however, the result was only to show that if reasonable assistance could have been procured, - but it could not then, - the disaster would not have happened. The concern was sound at bottom, and asked only for a year's grace from its creditors, which was at once cheerfully granted. Their balance-sheet was one of the first things to begin the restoration of confidence, and as the result, before the year had expired every creditor had been paid in full, with five per cent. interest for the delay; and in a few years the firm itself had regained all it had lost by the stoppage.
The most important thing done for Glasgow by Alexander Dennistoun, and that by which he will be best remembered, is the founding of the suburb of Dennistoun, and in this he used his large wealth well for the city, and wisely for his family.
In order to carry it out he added to Golfhill, by degrees as opportunity offered, the neighbouring properties of Craig Park, Whitehill, Meadow Park, Broom Park, Annfield, Bellfield, and Wester Craigs. The whole was surveyed and laid out in streets, terraces, and drives, by Mr. James Salmon, the Glasgow architect, who has all along given special supervision to the development of the suburb.
The first feus were given off in 1861, and on the Corporation acquiring the Kennyhill estate, and laying it out as the Alexandra Park, with the Alexandra Parade as its western approach, a great impetus was given to the growth of the suburb and Alexander Dennistoun saw the chief scheme of his life being rapidly realized. In the last few years of his life it was his greatest pride to drive round in his brougham, accompanied by some intimate friend, to show him how the improvements were going on. He died in 1874 at the full ripe age of eighty-four years. Of his family there remain only his third son, Alexander, now owner of Golfhill and the suburb, who married in 1852 Georgiana Helena, youngest daughter of the late Sir Charles Oakeley, Bart., and two daughters, Eleanor, married to Professor Sellar of Edinburgh University, and Elizabeth, married to Mr. Seton Thomson, her cousin.
Of the late Alexander Dennistoun it can be safely said that those who knew him best loved him most. Affable and courteous to all, he was endeared to his intimate friends by his high-toned honour, his kindliness of disposition, his clear head, and his capacity and willingness to give sound advice to all who asked for it. Well read and well informed, he had cultivated a taste for high art, and surrounded himself with high-priced and beautiful works of art, of both old and modern masters, forming one of the finest galleries in the West of Scotland. In politics he was a Liberal, and rather progressive, and though after leaving Parliament he took little public part, he was always ready to assist the cause with his influence and with his purse, and equally in Glasgow and Dunbartonshire, he was looked up to as a good adviser of the Liberal party.
John Dennistoun, who has been already mentioned, was born in 1804, being James' fourth son. He was, as already stated, educated at the Grammar School and the College of Glasgow. After travelling on the Continent he joined his father's firm, and at various times went to America in its interests. The two brothers remained through life closely bound together, and were both thus intimately connected with Glasgow and well known there. With the industrial life of Glasgow, John had perhaps even more to do than Alexander, for besides his connection with the firm and with the bank, he was also the originator and head of the firm of John Dennistoun & Co., cotton spinners, and one of four who started the large flax-spinning concern of Alexander Fletcher & Co., the other three being Alexander Fletcher, John Fergus, M.P. for Fifeshire, and John Piercy Henderson, and of these John Dennistoun was the survivor. Both of these establishments employed a great many work-people, and benefited the city far more than they did their proprietors.
In 1837, John Dennistoun was returned as M.P. for the city, along with Lord William Bentinck (who resigned in 1839), and Mr. Dennistoun continued to represent it till 1847, when he and his colleague, James Oswald of Shieldhall, were defeated by the cabal got up to support Alexander Hastie and the rather notorious John McGregor. In politics John Dennistoun was, like his father and his brother, a keen Liberal, according to the Liberalism of the day, which, however, was rather Whiggish, and hardly kept pace with the progressive Liberalism of the city, though it is worthy of note now, that in his electoral address he advocated reform of the House of Lords. In Parliament he had taken the lead in opposing Lord Ashley's factory legislation, and thus took the side of the employers against the employed; and though under the £10 franchise this did not prejudice him so much as it would have done under household suffrage, it helped, with other things, to turn the tide of popularity against him which led to his defeat.
In 1838 he had married Frances Anne, youngest daughter of the late Sir Henry Onslow, Bart., and by her he had three children. His eldest son, James, died early; his second, John, married Georgina, eldest daughter of Alexander Dennistoun now of Golfhill; and a daughter, Constance, married Mr. John Hamilton, who died in 1866, and she is now married to Mr. Lawrie of The Moss, great-grandson of that William Finlay whose daughter, as stated, James Dennistoun married.
John Dennistoun, after his defeat in 1847, though often asked, never again aspired to Parliamentary honours, but soon after bought Armadale, a villa adjoining his brothers on the Gareloch, and there, with occasional seasons spent in London, he passed the uneventful remainder of his life with his family and a small circle of close friends. The one exception to that repose was the time already alluded to, when the firm suspended payment; at that time he rose to the occasion and his labour and anxiety were great. He went to America to aid in rehabilitating the house, and, as already stated, that was successfully done. He lived to see his fortune more than retrieved, and died in 1870, at the age of sixty-six.
Speaking of him now as his friends remember him, he was a man scrupulous to an extreme on points of honour and integrity, of good ability, able to express himself tersely and clearly, a cultured and polished gentleman, who had read and travelled, and had mixed much in good society, where his geniality made him a great favourite, and it was unfortunate that his ripened experience of public life was in a manner lost; but what may have been public loss was gain to his family and friends, and perhaps even to himself in the long run, though, as naturally happens on such occasions, he felt his rejection keenly at the time. Nor did the city gain much credit by the change.
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