Alexander Speirs – Tobacco Lord (1714 – 1782) Part 2 May 14, 2020; Charles Rennie Cowie (1851-1922) March 18, 2020; Alexander Speirs – Tobacco Lord (1714 – 1782) Part 1 March 14, 2020; John Duncan (1897-1966) and the Glassford Family Painting. Glasgow's most well known street, Buchanan Street, is named after former Lord Provost and tobacco merchant Andrew Buchanan (Image: Media … Along Queen Street, they were all neighbours. The location and style of the property indicated that the family were among Glasgow’s elite businessmen – the famed Virginia Dons, or Tobacco Lords. Nestled amongst imposing 19 th and 20 th century industrial and retail architecture on Miller Street in Glasgow’s Merchant City, sits an attractive little house, built in 1775. In the 18th century Glasgow became one of the wealthiest cities in Europe. Colen Campbell, 1712. In some years in the 1760s, Glasgow, Greenock and Port Glasgow imported more tobacco than all the English towns combined while in the same decade more than half of all Scottish exports by value consisted of this single commodity. A family painting of the McCall family records the same style and colours as of that to renowned plantation owner John Glassford. One of Glasgow’s leading tobacco lords, he was reputed to be worth £153,000, a colossal figure somewhere in the region of £133 million in today’s money. The petition advocates a change in names such as Buchanan Street and Ingram Street to take the Tobacco Lords 'off the pedestal they seemingly stand on … The Tobacco Lords of Glasgow. At the forefront of this success was a group of men known as the Tobacco Lords. Learn who the Tobacco Lords were and what made them so successful. ... -- John Glassford was a Glasgow 'Tobacco Lord'. The Cuninghame Mansion – now The Gallery of Modern Art – was built by William Cuninghame, one of the four main ‘Tobacco Lords’ during Glasgow’s ‘golden age of tobacco’, 1740-1790. August 26, 2019 It was purchased in 1760 by John Glassford (1715-83), one of the most wealthy and influential of Glasgow’s Tobacco Lords. The 24-acres Mountblow estate was originally a part of Auchentoshan, but was feued in 1767 to Robert Donald (b 1724), who became Lord Provost, 1776-1778. An idea of the grandeur of the Tobacco Lords’ houses - which often dramatically punctuated the ends of the streets named after them - can be seen in the Gallery of Modern Art whose kernel is the grand mansion built, at a cost of £10,000, for William Cunninghame in 1780. He used much of this wealth to buy estates in Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire and Stirlingshire and in 1767 bought the Elderslie Estate from Helen Wallace, the direct descendent of William Wallace. Mountblow House photographed in 1870 by Thomas Annan. September 30, 2019; Sir Hector McNeill – Lord Provost of Glasgow 1945 – 1949. The house was built in 1767 by the tobacco merchant Robert Donald (1724-1803). The Shawfield Mansion at the bottom of modern day Glassford Street faced onto Argyle Street. This thesis examines the group known as the `tobacco lords' of Glasgow who made up the inner circle or elite of merchants trading to the American colonies in tobacco during the greater part of the eighteenth century, c. 1700 - 1780.