The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 by Gary Ralston Read Free Book Online

her royal status to walk into any house in Rosneath unannounced to ensure all within were well. She shared the village for many years with Moses McNeil, who lived out his latter years in the close-knit community where he had been raised for part of his younger life. History has not recorded if they were ever on speaking terms. They may have led two very different existences, but they could claim without fear of contradiction membership of special institutions that still mean so much to so many.
  It is to the credit of the founding fathers that they quickly attracted supporters of means and substance, not just financially, that would give their infant club the best chance of survival beyond a few short years – it was a feat few teams would manage in those chaotic times of the game’s development. In addition to the Marquis of Lorne, the McNeils also used their family connections at Gare Loch to secure the backing of the two most important families in the Glasgow retail trade, who built a palace for high-class shoppers, that is still in use in the city in the 21st century.
  John McNeil, father of Moses, was a master gardener at Belmore House which still stands as part of the Faslane Naval Base. In 1856, within 12 months of the birth of Moses, the house was sold by corn merchant John Honeyman to a family of impeccable merchant class who would, with one small gesture, have Rangers off and running 16 years later. The McDonald family had been significant players in the Glasgow retail industry since 1826 when John McDonald, a tailor from Vale of Leven, joined forces with Robertson Buchanan Stewart, a soldier from Rothesay. Their company, Stewart and McDonald, would become such giants of the industry that by 1866 it was turning over a colossal £1 million a year.
  Stewart and McDonald opened a wholesale drapery business in the upstairs of a tenement building at No. 5 Buchanan Street, taking a bold risk on the expansion of the city centre westwards from its main thoroughfare on Argyle Street. It was a calculated gamble that paid off within three years when the Argyll Arcade, a glass-covered thoroughfare of jewellers and upper-class outfitters, which retains much of its elegance to this day, was opened and lured more and more shoppers to an area of the town that had hitherto been under-developed for the fashionistas of the age. Stewart and McDonald expanded to meet the demand from the growing population and by 1866 it occupied a massive 4,000 square yards and its huge warehouses dominated Argyle Street, Buchanan Street and Mitchell Street. The first Hugh Fraser was a lace buyer to the company and rose to become a manager in 1849. A series of buyouts and mergers over the next 100 years finally led to it becoming known as House of Fraser. The current Fraser’s department store on the west side of Buchanan Street still occupies the building that was first constructed for Stewart and McDonald.
  John McDonald died in May 1860 aged just 51 and the debt of gratitude Rangers owe is to his sons, Alexander or, most probably, John junior. Alexander had been made a director of Stewart and McDonald in 1859 but passed away in his prime, dying of consumption during a tour of the Upper Nile in March 1869, aged only 31. The family fortune, including Belmore, passed in trust to John, then aged only 18, but the McDonald family would help develop a football legacy with one act of kindness, revealed by John Allan in his early history of Rangers. He wrote: ‘To William (McNeil) there fell the rare gift of a football from the son of a gentleman by whom his father was employed in the Gareloch. The generous donor was a Mr McDonald of the firm Stewart and McDonald, in Buchanan Street.’14 It was the same ball Willie would stuff under his arm before storming off in a huff at the prospect of being refused permission to play for the newly formed Rangers, telling his brother and their pals: ‘If you can’t have me, you can’t have my ball.’15