Alexander Dennistoun

& A. Dennistoun, a trading company active across the Atlantic, with interests in tobacco, cotton, and branches in Liverpool, New Orleans, Havre de Grace, and subsequently at New York, Melbourne, and London.

He engaged in friendly rivalry with William Cobbett in agricultural pursuits, particularly in the raising of root crops, which were then comparatively in their infancy.

[4] In 1823 he married Eleanor Jane, youngest daughter of John Thomson of Nassau, Bahamas – who had relocated to Liverpool – and a few years after went to Havre, where there was a branch of the house in charge of George Anderson.

[4] The family spent four years in Havre le Grace, where their daughter Eleanor Mary Dennistoun was born 19 September 1829.

Here he continued to reside, alternating for summer quarters the villa of Lagarie, near Rhu on the banks of Gare Loch, for the remainder of a long and generally prosperous life.

The whole was surveyed and laid out in streets, terraces, and drives, by Glasgow architect James Salmon, who supervision to the development of the suburb.

In the last few years of his life it was his greatest pride to drive round in his brougham, accompanied by some intimate friend, to show him how the improvements were going on.