George (and John) Stevenson
George Stevenson was a Motherwell legend both as player and manager. As an inside-forward, indeed "The Prince of Inside Forwards" between 1923 and the Second World War he took the field for The Steelman over five hundred times, scoring at a goal every three games, winning the league in 1932 and twelve Scotland caps to boot. He then helped to keep the club going during the War-years and on football's resumption in 1946 he would manage it for just shy of a decade, reaching the Scottish Cup final in 1951 and taking the trophy in 1952 before stepping back in 1955. Over thirty years he was a single-club man but one born in 1905 not in Lanark but Ayrshire, in Kilbirnie.
His father, John, was a Dublin-born flax-dresser, who has also been a professional footballer both North and South of the border. His mother was from Paisley and his English-born but Scots-raised, elder brother, also John, would also be a professional footballer, over fifteen years with several clubs north and south of the border, notably Nelson, St. Johnstone and Falkirk. And George Stevenson would pursue his career seemingly having married in Dalry in 1932, his bride local girl, Isabella Thomson, they having a daughter, also Isabella, the following year in Paisley, and a second, Mary. Isabella Snr. was to die aged seventy in 1975 in Wishaw, Isabella Jnr., who would marry future internationalist, Jim Forrest, in Hamilton, two years earlier. So what, you may ask, is the Highland connection?
The answer is that George would die there in 1990 at the age of eighty-four. Officially place of death was Dingwall, Inbhir Pheofharain in Gaelic, "Peffermouth", but actually it was at the Ravenscroft Guest House in the Victorian spa-village of Strathpeffer, five miles up both river and, well, strath to be buried still in Ross-shire in Fortrose on the Black Isle for reasons previously unknown. But we have been contacted by Duncan Buchanan, Mary Stevenson's son, George Stevenson's grandson. He tells us that is 1975 his family had relocated to Fortrose, the widowed George joining them there before moving into the care-home for his last two years. So he is buried where his daughter was and still stays.
Birth Locator:
1905 - Nitshill Terrace, Kilbirnie, Ayrshire
Residence Locations:
1911 - 18, Bank St., Kilbirnie, Ayrshire
1921 - 44, Knoxville Rd., Kilbirnie, Ayrshire
Death Locator:
"Ravenscroft", Strathpeffer, Ross-shire
Burial Locator:
Fortrose and Rosemarkie Cemetery, Fortrose, Easter Ross
Other Locations:
Motherwell Football Club Hall of Fame
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