James Dunlop of Tolcross.Born 1811, died 1893.

The death of James Dunlop is the removal of an old landmark. Mr. Dunlop represented the Dunlops of Glasgow, and since the Stirlings of Glasgow came to an end with William Stirling in 1889, the Dunlops have been the oldest, almost the last of our burgher aristocracy, the founders of our trade. These Stirlings and Dunlops were prominent traders here when James VI. was King, and they traded here, in the one place without a break for 300 years, a mercantile pedigree not elsewhere to be matched among the sons of Japheth.Like the Stirlings, the Dunlops were of good blood to begin with, and like the Stirlings they had their ups and downs. The founder of the family was a younger son on Dunlop of that ilk, John Dunlop, burgess and Bailie in Glasgow, a well-to-do merchant and banker, with his town house in the Limmerfield beside the High Kirk, and with Garnkirk (bought from the Stirlings) for his country house. From him down, the Dunlops have been merchants, bankers, writers, shipowners, landowners, coalmasters, ironmasters; they have served the town as Councillors, Bailies, Provosts, Deans of Guild, Members of Parliament; they have made money, and they have lost it; but they have never lost their good name - a hot-tempered, outspoken, strenuous race, whose word has always been as good as their bond. The founder’s grandson, James Dunlop, third laird of Garnkirk, had, inter alios, a thirteenth child, Provost Colin Dunlop of Carmyle, whose fine town mansion still stands in Argyle Street. Provost Colin turned the family on to a new set of rails, which they have run on ever since. He was himself a Virginia merchant (head of the great house of Colin Dunlop & Sons) and a banker (one of the original partners of the Ship Bank), but his lands of Carmyle were full of minerals and in the centre of a great mineral field, and his family took thereon to mining. Provost Colin’s eldest son, James Dunlop, second of Carlyle, was a man of great business capacity and energy and of boundless ambition. He was a merchant in the Virginia trade to begin with; he was a banker; he made himself a master of coalmining, and worked with success Carmyle and other fields; finally, having studied land-values and watched their steady rise, he set to and bought all the land he could lay his hands on, Garnkirk (from the elder branch of the family), Bedlay, Gartferry, Chryston, Gartcosh, Kipps, &c, lands yielding even then 4000 pounds a year. His speculations far outwent his own capital, but he had the confidence and support of even so cautious a banker as Sir William Forbes, and he was in full sail for fortune when he was caught in the commercial hurricane of 1793, and foundered. By the help of friends, he retained the Carmyle coals, and he worked them with fair success; he was even able to buy what was left of the ancient patrimony of the Corbetts of Tolcross. He died in the old house of Tolcross in 1816, and he lies in the crypt of the High Kirk.

He was succeeded in his coals and in Tolcross by has eldest son, Colin Dunlop of Clyde, M.P. for Glasgow, the well-known “Colin D’lap” of reform lyrics. Colin Dunlop's fortunes were as chequered as his father’s. He passed advocate, but never practiced – he came back to the coals; coals led to iron, and in 1810 he bought Clyde Iron-works; m I824 he was bankrupt; in 1828 he was able to buy back Clyde from the trustee on his estate; and in 1837 he died very suddenly, leaving a large fortune. He was unmarried, and his nephews, James Dunlop, just dead, and Colin Robert Dunlop, sons of George Dunlop, W.S., succeeded him in Clyde Iron-works, James Dunlop in Tolcross as well.Like his uncle Colin, James Dunlop was originally meant for the law, and he was for a little while in his father’s office; but he came to Clyde as a youngster, and he spent his whole business life in the iron trade. The Clyde Iron Company is now a limited concern, and James Dunlop retired some years ago from business, but business had business had never been his only interest. He was seldom seen and never heard on a platform, but he did good public work in a quiet way. He was a leader of the old Whigs, Colin D’lap’s old party, whose great services to the commonwealth are nowadays made light of; he was the oldest ex-member of Town Council, going back to the 30's and to Provost Henry Dunlop; he was almost the oldest ex-director of the Merchant’s House and of the Chamber of Commerce; except Lord Stair, he was the oldest Deputy-Lieutenant of the county, and he was the trusted advisor of succesive Lord-Lieutenants; he was our oldest acting Justice of Peace, and he was long the Nestor of our Court, where his great experience, good sense, unfailing fairness and unfailing courtesy gave him a unique authority; indeed, in licensing cases he had squared the circle, having won the confidence of both publican and prohibitionist.It was by no means impossible to quarrel with James Dunlop, for he had the hot temper and outspoken way of his race, but it was impossible not to like him – he was so dead-straight, so incapable of a selfish or unkindly act. A full Dunlop share of ups and downs showed him equal to either fortune: prosperity left him simple in bearing and in habits; troubles drew no complaint; he bore them cheerfully, perhaps thankfully. He was capital company; his talk was racy, shrewd, full of information that dies with him; he talked it in the Scotch that educated Scotchmen spoke when he was learning to speak - the musical, graphic dialect of Scott and Cockburn; and he had a quaint charm of manner, as natural and frank as a schoolboy, but punctiliously courteous, almost courtly. We have good men left us many, but of the type of James Dunlop not one.As little have we another place like Tolcross. Beyond the grimy suburb of Parkhead, where Gallowgate has become the Old London Road, and trams and pavements have just come to an end, a high wall with gates and lodge skirts the turnpike on the north. Pass through the gates and you might be a hundred miles away. Forges and foundries, coalpits and iron-works, have vanished; the only

building in sight is a turreted mansion standing in a wooded demesne; a burn winds between sloping banks planted with shrubs and flowering trees; rabbits scurry among the bushes, and rooks wheel above the tall elms. The house, built by Mr. Dunlop in the old Scotch style, stands on a terrace above the burn. The ancient mansion: where the Corbets lived, and where the great speculator died, “the Towcorse, a good and substantious house, with good gardens and inclosures” stood on the slope of the burn, and the quant drawing-room, one stair up, opened out on a trim bowling-green; below, on a stone bench in the open porch, beggars in old days sat in wait for the Laird or the Lair’s “Leddy”.

Mr. Dunlop was twice married. Hi first wife, Janet Donald, daughter of Colin Dunlop Donald, and great-granddaughter (as he was great-grandson) of Provost Colin Dunlop, died m 1853, leaving surviving one son and 3 daughters. His 2nd wife, Louisa Locke, widow of William Colquhoun of Clathic, survives him without issue. He was buried yesterday below the fine Jacoban monument he had raised to Janet Donald. It stands on the west slope of the Necropolis, facing the Limmerfield, where the 1st of the Glasgow Dunlops lived when James VI. was king.