Old Photographs Falkirk Central Scotland

Tour Scotland wee video of old photographs of Falkirk, a large town in the Central Lowlands. Historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley north west of Edinburgh and north east of Glasgow. The town is at the junction of the Forth and Clyde and Union Canals, a location which proved key to its growth as a centre of heavy industry during the Industrial Revolution. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Falkirk was at the centre of the iron and steel industry. The area was at the forefront of canal construction when the Forth and Clyde Canal opened in 1790. The Union Canal built in 1822 provided a link to Edinburgh and early railway development followed in the 1830s and 1840s. The Antonine Roman Wall, which stretches across the centre of Scotland, passed through the town and remnants of it can still be seen. George Forrest who was born in Falkirk on 13 March 1873, was a Scottish botanist, who became one of the first explorers of China's then remote southwestern province of Yunnan, generally regarded as the most biodiverse province in the country. Robert Dollar, also known as Captain Robert Dollar, who was born in 1844 in Bainsford, Falkirk. was a Scots American industrialist. The title Captain was honorary and he was called the Grand Old Man of the Pacific. Both were bestowed after his entry into the shipping industry. Dollar became a lumber baron, shipping magnate, philanthropist; he was also a Freemason. His biography and an extensive introduction by him is contained within the book, Men Who Are Making the West 1923. Thomas Clement Douglas was born in Falkirk on 20 October 1904. He was a Canadian social democratic politician and Baptist minister. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. He left federal politics to become the Saskatchewan CCF's leader and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. His government was the first social democratic government in North America, and it introduced the continent's first single payer, universal health care program. Robert D. Wilson was born in Falkirk on February 3, 1839. He was an American farmer and politician. Wilson emigrated to the United States in 1854 and settled in the Town of Melrose, Jackson County, Wisconsin. Wilson was a farmer who served in the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1880 and was a Republican. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day