Andrew "Andy" Whitelaw was born in 1865 and spent all of his childhood and adolescence in the same house on Levenbank in Jamestown, the only boy of four children. But his parents were not local. Both were from and married in Old Monkland in Lanarkshire. His father was variously described as an engine-fitter, a blacksmith and engineer but Andy was only three when he died. 

At sixteen Andy was himself an Apprentice Engineer. At twenty in 1885, having started his football career with the local Jamestown team, he turning out for Vale of Leven, as a fast and hard-tackling full-back, becoming captain. As such he would win two Scotland caps, the first in 1887, the second in 1890. However, shortly after Vale of Leven's defeat in the 1890 Scottish Cup Final, Andy, now working as a Calico-Printer-Engraver, and the club fell out and he, in 1891, aged twenty-six, with an offer to turn professional moved on. 

He went south to Notts County spending two seasons with the Nottingham club and then for the five seasons moved around clubs in the East Midlands. There was a season at Heanor Town in the Midland League, another at Leicester Fosse, a return to Heanor and a final 1897-98 season, aged thirty-two, at Ilkeston Town. In the meantime in 1893 he had married Maria Elizabeth (Lizzie) Wyld in Nottingham. She was the daughter of a local professional cricketer. One of the witnesses was Dan Bruce, formally again of The Vale, who had also moved to Notts County the year after Andy.        

The couple would settle in Mansfield and have seven children, three girls and four boys but with two of the latter dying young. He would work as a Labourer and then as an Asphalter at a local chemical works. Lizzie would die relatively young, in 1924 aged just fifty-one. Andy would outlive her by fourteen years, dying whilst staying with his son, also Andrew, still in Mansfield in 1938 at age seventy-two.