The Moffats of Paisley

More than half of our Moffat Ancestors were in the textile industry.They were handloom weavers; tailors, drapers, sales agents, corsetmakers, lace makers, and worked in the mills as bleachers, printers, dyers, and machinists.

James Moffat 1832 was the first Moffat in our family to move to Paisley around 1853. He grew up in Airdrie where his father Alexander Moffat 1787 and older brother Alexander were weavers. James was a tailor like his grandfather.

He met his wife Eliza Ann Moore 1832, a seamstress from Ireland, and they settled at 7 Broomlands and had a successful “tailor and clothier” business for many years, employing 3 men and a boy.

James was 66 when he died “temporarily residing at Largs”. Largs was a seaside resort on the Ayrshire coast that became a favorite of the Moffats. I think James may have rented a flat there every summer. His son James belonged to a grass bowling club in Largs. I found a newspaper article about him giving out prizes.

James Fairlie Moffat 1862 was the oldest child and only son of James and Eliza and instead of following them into the clothing business he became a master butcher! He moved from Paisley to Glasgow with his wife Margaret Thomson McInnes for a few years then around 1901 he came back to Paisley and switched careers, becoming a sewing machine maker and then a machinist at Clarks and Coats.

Margaret was the daughter of grocers - her grandfather William Templeton 1796 ran a grocery store at Blackland Mill - a vast textile factory. Her mother Ann Raeburn Templeton 1833 worked as a grocer then as a draper and hosier. Their entrepreneurial spirit moved the family out of the factory and into the more lucrative (and healthier) life of shop-keeping. Margaret’s dad John McInnes died of typhoid fever four years after he and Ann were married.

In 1915 James and Margaret lived with their 8 chlldren at 9 Lady Lane, Paisley. It looks like a really nice building but they would have all been on part of one floor in just a few rooms. Young working adults didn’t get their own flats but stayed with the family until they got married.

Valuation Roll 1915 of 9 Lady Lane showing 8 tenants inc. James F Moffat

John McInnes Moffat 1890, my grandfather, and his brother BIll were bakers. His older brother James Fairlie Moffat and younger brother Joe were butchers like their father.

When WWI started in July 1914 the entire family were living at 9 Lady Lane:

The four oldest sons went off to war and all returned.

John McInnes Moffat Highland Light Infantry 1915

After the war the brothers returned to Paisley. Younger brother Norman Stewart Moffat 1900, an engineer in the shipbuilding business, emigrated to Canada in 1923. Joseph Humphrey Moffat 1903 became a butcher.

My grandfather John married Lizzie Clark Millar in 1922 and they had two children, Margaret and James. Margaret died at age 5 of meningitis and my dad became an only child. The days of the big families were over.

John McInnes Moffat (center) with mother Margaret (R); Lizzie (top L); son James (Dad) with cousin Meg (front) at Largs c 1935

James Fairlie Moffat 1925 (my dad) grew up in Paisley and went to Paisley Grammar School, a fee-paying school, and became a journalist when he left school at 16. He was able to got to this prestigious school due to an inheritance left to his mum by her great uncle William Clark, a single lawyer in Edunburgh.

Jim joined the RAF in 1943 and served in Singapore.

He met my mum when he was working in Edinburgh on assignment from the Glasgow Herald and returned to Paisley after the wedding. He was a night editor at the Herald until 1958 and they lived on McKerrell Street. After I was born the night shifts were tough on the family and he took a job as press officer for Stewarts and Lloyds in Corby, England.

John and Lizzie lived in Paisley at 18 Sherwood Avenue for many years until Lizzie’s death and then John came to Corby to live with us.