The Crawfords of The Calder Glen Woollen Mill.

The material in this section is what this site is all about, the history of a Lochwinnoch family written by members of that family. These ancestors may be gone but their life and experiences are not forgotten. Like a lot of families in Lochwinnoch, and probably most places, there are many interconnections, especially over generations.

This section is curtesy of David Williams a descendant of the Orr’s of Kaim. David’s genealogical pastime includes a 16,000 name tree on Ancestry, a larger database in Family Tree Maker, a website, a family history group on Facebook and a file cabinet full of notes! David is keen to continue his family research so if you want to get in touch you can do so through “Contact Us” on this site. I will pass your message along.

David’s links to Lochwinnoch are on his mother's side who was a Hepburn, Jessie Crawford Hepburn (b 1922). Her grandmother was Jessie Brodie Crawford Hepburn (1849-1941) who was the daughter of William Crawford (1790-1881), the owner of the Calder Glen Woollen Mill. Her great grandmother was Agnes Orr (1809-1891), the daughter of William Orr (1780-1844) and Janet Brodie (1783-1849) of Kaim. After the death of her husband, James, in 1894, Jessie Hepburn moved from Glasgow back to Lochwinnoch, living at the old Crawford home on 35 Calder Street. In 1916 Jessie sold the Crawford place to the Lochwinnoch gas company and moved to Johnshill to live at Sunnyside Cottage until 1941.

The simple family tree below shows the generational name changes from Orr, Crawford, Hepburn and finally Williams.

The family tree below is an extract from a much larger tree of the Orr’s of Kaim which can be viewed in the gallery. The links from David back to Willam Orr of Kaim are shown circled. The extract starts one generation before William Crawford, owner of the Calder Glen Woollen Mill who married into the Orr family. David provided a selection of family photographs and some of these are overlaid on this extract.

The Crawfords came from Ayrshire, somewhere near Dalry. They originated, it is said, from a place called Crawfordland near Kilmarnock. Unfortunately, Grandpa Crawford (William) did not pass on any family records. He had served an apprenticeship as a millwright in Greenock which he had started in the year 1802. It is from him that our family can say that they got their engineering ability, their aptitude and skill in learning the sciences and ability to handle tools.

William Crawford played a significant part in the history of the Village of Lochwinnoch.  He was the owner of the Calder Glen woollen mill which was said to have employed about 150 people at the peak its business activity.  William also married into the large and influential Orr family from the Kaim, a few years after the untimely death of his first wife.  His descendants lived in Lochwinnoch until the 1950’s. He and his second wife, Agnes Orr are buried in the graveyard at Auld Simon along with their son William and son-in-law James Hepburn.

David has written three of the four sections, Calder Glen Woollen Mill, Descendants of the Crawford family and the Last William Orr of Kaim. The remaining sections comprise the complete autobiographical account by James Thomas Orr Hepburn (b 1875) from boyhood till he emigrated to Canada in 1910. He is a grandson of William Crawford and the grandfather of David Williams. I have taken the liberty of breaking this document into several smaller sections.  

David has also provided a comprehensive collection of photographs which are presented in an accompanying gallery. It comprises family images, scenes of Lochwinnoch and postcards of Lochwinnoch collected by David’s grandmother between 1904-1910. Many of the Lochwinnoch scenes were taken in 1905 by an amateur photographer James Heythorne.