However, the brothers' childhood would be complicated. In the first half of the 1870s the family would move to Kelvin, close to the mill. And it would be there that in 1876 their mother would pass away, Davie aged six and Andy four, with their father remarrying the following year. His new wife was Charlotte Wilson, with whom he would have three children to add to the six with Isabelle, thus the boys would grow up as two of nine, still in Kelvin and then in Partick, when the hybrid family moved there in the 1880s. 

By then Davie was training as a Steam Engine Builder but at the same time also playing football, starting, like his brother, with Minerva, originally based at Overnewton Park in Finnieston and an early ground of The Jags. He was to begin with a half-back described as "dour and determined" who represented Glasgow Juniors before in 1891 at twenty-one joining Queen's Park, where at left-half he was in the teams that to Celtic twice lost the Scottish Cup Final that same year but had revenge in 1893, the same year as he was awarded his first cap. 

Unlike his brother Davie did not join the family firm. Instead he concentrated on developing a career as a Consulting Engineer and it was as such that in August 1900 so thirty he moved to London, there turning out for London Caldonians. However, by then, although his playing had been somewhat restricted by some ill-health he had been awarded two more caps, in 1894 and 1897, had been a member of the Queen's Park Committee and had been in the club's eleven that had just lost the Cup Final, to Celtic once more, in a seven goal thriller, The Spiders fighting back from 1-3 at half-time, he now at right-back.