His two eldest sisters, Mary and Margaret, worked as domestic servants when John and his other three siblings were still at school.
When John reached 16 he too became a millwright.
By 1891, John had moved to Edinburgh and was living as a lodger with a widowed pianoforte maker, Richard Honeyman, 70, and his daughter, Helen, 45.
A year later he was sent on the Corsewall Lighthouse project.
He married Margaret Gow, the 26-year-old daughter of a contractor from Blairgowrie, in 1896.
They went on to have three children – John, Jane and Neil.
And John Sr lived a long life. He died aged 93 in March 1958 at Edinburgh City Hospital.
