Page:Origin and history of Glasgow Streets.djvu/31

 made the hero of a torchlight procession which was organised by the Bridgeton and Anderston weavers. This street when first opened was called Botany Bay. Burns alludes to Dempster in his epistle to James Smith.

. This suburb comprises several properties acquired iit different times, the first purchase being Golfhill by James Dennistoun, who bought it from the trustees of Jonathan Anderson in 1814. He built the mansion-house, where he resided till he died on 11th October, 1835. His heirs and successors continued to purchase adjoining lands up till 1864, when the estate in cumulo extended to considerably over 200 acres, which is now fairly well covered with tenements and villas. The Dennistouns have had a long and honourable connection with this city, both as Virginia Dons and cotton magnates, and politically they followed their heart more than their own interest, and it is well known that they gave more than sympathy to the mifortunate Prince of the Forty-five when he honoured Saint Mungo with his presence. The Colgrain branch is the recognised head of the name, they having a pedigree that goes back beyond history when their ancestor gave the place-name to the district beyond Finlayston in Renfrewshire. The Maxwells of Stanely Castle came into possession of that holding through intermarriage with the Dennistouns, it having been granted to Sir Robert de Danielston by King Robert the Third on 24th August, 1392.

, named for William Dixon of Dixon's Blazes. He was born at Govan in 1788. His wife, Elizabeth Strang, was a sister of the City Chamberlain. He died in 1862, and was succeeded by his son, the late W. S. Dixon.

is in great part an old Roman or military road, and was until the beginning of last century a straggling path which in the sixteenth or seventeeth century formed the access to the crofts and common pasture on the north-west of the city, and apparently had its name from John Dobbie, who owned land early in the seventeenth century outside the Stable-Green-Port, and members of the Dobbie family continued to hold land in the district for a hundred and fifty years afterwards.