Andrew Hannah
The Hannahs were of Irish origin, from Co. Down. Andrew's family would cross the water first. He was Scots-born in Renton in 1864. The family of David Hannah, perhaps a distant cousin but certainly sharing the same Ulster roots, would follow to the same Dunbartonshire village with him born only three years later in 1867. And both would play for Renton's football team, overlapping by a season, Andrew for Scotland also but not David, not least because, since he was actually born on the Emerald Isle, he did not qualify.
Andrew Hannah's father was a Grocer, who became a Dairyman, a Milkman. Andrew himself started his working life in the Turkey Red Dye Works and it was also about that time, 1882, aged eighteen, that his football career at full-back began to blossom, the first of the great team that was to emerge with the 1885 Scottish Cup Final win, followed up with a loss in 1886 and a second win and the "World Championship" in and of 1888 with him as club captain. He had also by then just won his only Scottish cap.
However, at the end of the 1887-88 season, with Hannah aged almost twenty-four so with time on his side he was tempted south by West Bromwich. Yet, despite impressing he did not stay beyond September, returning to Renton to complete the season. Doubtless that had something to do with him in the previous April having in the village and recorded as a Dairyman like his father married Jessie Thomson, a local girl but one living in Glasgow. They were to have five children, five girls and a boy, the first four all born in Renton despite Andrew once again going south to pursue his football. This time it was from 1889 to 1891 to Everton, winning the Football League in the second season.
But once more he did not stick. He came home for Renton's 1891-92 campaign, when it joined the second year of the Scottish League. His village club would finish 6th. And there he might have stayed but for the creation back on Merseyside of Liverpool F.C. to fill the Anfield void as the result of Everton's departure to pastures new. He went for a good signing-on fee, a good wage and as the club's first captain. He would stay for two season's seeing the nascent club initially into the Football League and in 1894 into the First Division.
By then he was almost thirty and suffering from problems with knee and ankle. He played only half the games the following campaign as Liverpool was immediately relegated and left the club for the next, heading north once more but not home. He had plans to go into the hotel business, played a year for Callander Rob Roy, then moved to Clyde for 1896-7 and back in the League for a final, final season. Meantime he had a pub in Lanark, in 1898 took over one in Kirkintilloch, where in March 1899 he lost his wife at the age of just thirty-three after complications following on from the birth of their daughter, Edith.
Hannah, however, did not stay widowed long. In August that same year he was remarried in Glasgow, to the also widowed, Glasgow-born Mary McQuaker, nee Dickson, and after running a pub in Forfar, they settled in Clydebank. Andrew was by then, in 1911, running another bar, this time at the Gaiety Theatre in Glasgow. Indeed the youngest of their three children, two girls and a boy, would be born in the city.
Yet by 1921 he had left the licenced trade altogether, working as a Shipyard Detective, his trade until retirement. But he remained at the same Clydebank address throughout. Indeed he was there until his death in 1940 at the age of seventy-five. Moreover, whilst his final moments would be in Glasgow's Western Infirmary, he would be buried back in Clydebank at Kilbowie Cemetery, survived by Mary by eleven years, she then laid to rest alongside him.
Birth Locator:
1864 - Milburn, Renton, Dunbartonshire
Residence Locations:
1871 - 72, Main St., Renton, Dunbartonshire
1881 - 70, Main St., Renton, Dunbartonshire
1891 - 15, Oakfield Rd., Liverpool
1892 - Fullshaw Cottage, Renton, Dunbartonshire
1899 - Black Bull Inn, Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire
1901 - 11, East High St., Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire
1911-40 - 7, North Elgin St., Clydebank
Death Locator:
1940 - Western Infirmary, Glasgow
Burial Locator:
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