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. It was based on the lace-weaving mill in the Pobrenou suburb and soon known as La Escocesa, 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. And the Blacks were both also 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, "Joe" 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 on Vermont St. in Kinning Park in 1881 with John from one source born there also and but actually registered in Darvel on East Main St. in 1883.

However, by 1901, with their father still in Newmilns, neither of his sons were. They were, aged nineteen/twenty and seventeen/eighteen more than likely in Barcelona, there presumably also weaving lace. But they were also both to return. In 1911 they are staying with their by then 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 now a Drapery Salesman staying on Riverbank St. and childless and John, his wife Mary Brown from Darvel, with three children, all Newmilns-born, still weaving and specifically for Johnston, Shields. In fact both men would die still in the village; Alex aged fifty-five in December 1936, signed off by his brother, to buried in Newmilns Cemetery and joined by his wife, again Newmilns-born Mary Wallace, on her death in 1944; John at sixty-four in 1947, his wife following him a decade later still in the village but with just now no known grave for either.