Duncan Gilmour was born at North Gerhallow on the 21st October 1816. He was the firstborn of Duncan Gilmour and Agnes (Anne) Turner. His Father had been born at Dalalongard at the head of the Holy Loch to yet another Duncan. His Mother Agnes was born in Greenock although her Mother’s family the Bouchers seem to have come from Luss on Loch Lomond. North Gerhallow was a very small settlement in the hills behind Bullwood just South of Dunoon in Argyll on the Highland shore of the Firth of Clyde.
Within a year or two of Duncan’s birth however, Father, Mother and little Duncan moved to Bute where a second child Mary was born in 1819. Three more siblings were born on Bute between 1821 and 1826 but when Walter arrived in 1829 the family were back again at North Gerhallow.Young Duncan was then only thirteen and it is thought that he left Scotland two or three years later. Family legend had it that as the oldest child he was compelled to leave home because family circumstances were too strained to feed the extra mouth. Perhaps it was significant that the years we are considering include 1833 when the potato crop failed in Argyll. Again family legend reported that he went to Ireland and there learned the wine and spirit trade and this legend is confirmed by an obituary in the Sheffield Independent which appeared on Duncan’s death in Sheffield in 1889. It recalls that ‘when quite a lad he left home to woo fortune and, as it has proved, gain it’. The obituary goes on to relate that in Dublin he worked for Alexander Findlater and Company where he gained knowledge which contributed to his business success.
His personal life also prospered and in 1844 he married Eliza Willard at St.Andrew’s Church Dublin, the marriage certificate showing that he was living in Kingstown or Dun Laoghaire as it is now known. Their first five children were born in Ireland, three girls followed by two boys, Duncan who would eventually become Managing Director and Chairman of Gilmours and Charles who would take the Gilmour name to Tasmania.
By 1883 the old man had retired and it was in this year that he accompanied Charles to Australia on their first exploratory visit. Duncan the founder of Gilmours (of which you can learn more by clicking here) died on the 11th January 1889 at Sandygate, Upper Hallam, Sheffield and he was buried at Christ Church, Fulwood in that city.
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