The Templetons of Ayrshire
Glenshamrock, one of the farms lived in by the Templetons
James Templeton 1735, was born in Auchinleck in Ayrshire, one of nine children including his twin brother Andrew. He was a farmer and married Marion/Margaret Gibson 1738 from Irvine.
Early names are not always spelled the same and can have variations, hence the confusion about Marion/Margaret. There were several spellings for Templeton - spelling wasn’t a big thing in those days and even in the same document a name might be spelled differently:
Tempiltoun
Templetoun
Templtoun
Templton
Tampeltoun
Tempelltoun
You get it.
James had 5 children and his oldest son William Templeton 1765 became a weaver. Weaving was a lucrative gig in the 1700s before technology made home weaving obsolete and companies rich.
I don’t know when William took to weaving - if he started in Auchinleck or when he moved to Paisley, sometime in his early twenties.
Auchinleck (red) to Paisley (blue)
Usually weaving ran in families e.g. the Moffats had an eldest son weaving for several generations. As you can see below the equipment took up a lot of room (more than a home gym). Even when weaving was done in factories there were still home weavers who supplied cloth as freelancers.
Handloom Weaving 1747 (William Hogarth)
At some point young William set off for the big city to find fame and fortune. He found Catherine McMillan 1768. Catherine was the youngest daughter of an established Paisley family - her maternal grandfather William Gibb c 1700 was a maltman or brewer. Maltmen were guild craftsmen with apprenticeships and standards of excellence.
In 1792 when William and Catherine married at Paisley Abbey the textile industry was peaking. The town was known for weaving of fine linens and silk and for the famous Paisley shawls. William lived to a ripe old age. He was a widower by 1841 when the census record shows him employed as a “Silk H L W” (hand loom weaver). In 1851 he was 85 and still working but had switched to cotton. He lived with his daughter Agnes at 35 George Street.
In 1850 there were 7000 weavers in Paisley!