The Blacks - Alex and John

In Barcelona in 1901 as organised football began in the Catalan capital there were two Black brothers in the pioneering FC Escoces team, based on the lace-weaving mill in the Pobrenou suburb, it part-owned by the Johnston Shields company of Newmilns in Ayrshire and with some forty Scots including John Hamilton, Geordie Girvan and Willie Gold sent out to get it up and running. Both were Scots, named as Alexander and Joseph, with the former assumed to be the older. And when the the works team disbanded both brothers would play on, Alex going on immediately to FC Barcelona for a season, with his brother turning out first for a rival team, Hispania, before moving across in 1904.

But no trace of the two boys together could be found Darvel/Newmilns and the reason was simple. As research by SFHG has established Joseph was in fact John. Thus in 1891 Alex and John Black were 9 and 7 respectively and staying at 13, Isles St. in Newmilns. In fact both their parents were Newmilns-born, their father, Alex Sr. a lace-weaver. But they had moved away to Glasgow before returning and it was the city that had seen certainly Alex's birth in 1881 with John from one source born there also and in 1884 but actually registered in the home village.

However, by 1901, with their father still in Newmilns, neither of his sons were. They were, aged nineteen and seventeen more than likely in Barcelona, there presumably also weaving lace. But they were also both to return. In 1911 they are staying with their widowed father at Borebraehead in Newmilns once more, both Lace Curtain Weavers. Moreover, a decade later, they are still in the village, both married, Alex a Drapery Salesman staying on Riverbank St. and John still weaving and for Johnston, Shields. In fact both would die still in the village, Alex aged fifty-five in 1936 and John at sixty-four in 1947 to be buried with his wife, who had died three years earlier.