GLASGOW merchants dominated the Atlantic trade in produce grown by enslaved people, especially tobacco.

Brothers Richard and Alexander Oswald of Scotstoun started of one of the city’s major colonial mercantile dynasties – and they were well-known in the city for providing wine to churches and the Council.

James, the grandfather of Richard (1687 - 1766) and Alexander Oswald (1694- 1763), was from Kirkwall in Orkney. He migrated in the 17th century to Wick in Caithness where he became a Baillie.

James had two sons— James Oswald, Episcopal minister of Watten in Caithness, and George, Presbyterian minister of Dunnet in the same county.

James, the Episcopal minister, married Mary Murray in 1683, the year he became a minister. They had two sons and two daughters. The sons Richard, born in 1687, and Alexander Oswald born in 1694, came to Glasgow at the height of its rise to a major trading city.

Scotstoun HouseScotstoun House (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

Their career followed what seems to have been the general mercantile pattern. Initially the bulk of their trade was with Europe, with the transatlantic trade gaining importance in later years.

The brothers were successful merchants and shipowners, and they prospered in business and in finance. They did not limit themselves by specialising in any one field of enterprise. Although they were Tobacco Lords they did not trade only with Virginia, or only in tobacco.

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At the 1724 trial in Edinburgh of the Hanoverian surgeon Alexander Horsburgh, Richard Oswald of Scotstoun appeared as he was a “recognized authority on the slave trading in Glasgow.”

In 1742 their financial success enabled them to build in the Stockwellgate, a four-storey tenement of offices, with a courtyard surrounded by brewhouse, stabling vaults, sheds and sufficient storage below to store seven hundred hogsheads of tobacco and wine.

It was demolished around 1875 to make way for the new bridge being built for the Union Railway Company.

St Andrew's by the GreenSt Andrew's by the Green (Image: Glasgow City Archives)

They were wine merchants and appear often in records held by the City Archives chronicling their provision of wine to the Council. In 1746 they are recorded as supplying  wine for Communion in the city churches and for gifts to the “town’s friends” and “treating of nobility.”

Richard was the more active of the brothers, and very soon took a leading part in industries outside the partnership.

In 1741 he was a partner in the rope factory at Port Glasgow which undertook, for certain concessions, to perform such public services as the repair of the quay and the dredging of the harbour and three years later, having become a partner in the bottle-work at the Broomielaw, he proceeded to put new energy into the business and extend the size of the factory.

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In 1750 they were instrumental in promoting the construction of the English Episcopal Church, St Andrews by the Green, which still stands today.

Their strong Episcopal connections meant that they were suspected of Jacobite leanings and Richard was appointed as one of the six commissioners appointed to negotiate with Prince Charles Edward’s  about the demands made of the city in 1745.

The Oswalds acquired Scotstoun House, built in the early 18th century, and estate in 1751 from William Walkinshaw of Barrowfield. The house was extended to designs by the architect David Hamilton. Scotstoun House was demolished in the 1890s during the construction of the Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire Railway.

The two brothers died at Scotstoun - Alexander in 1763 and Richard in 1766. They had retired from active business life and “devoted themselves to acts of friendship, generosity and hospitality.”

Both brothers were bachelors and Scotstoun estate passed to George Oswald, their second cousin. Oswald was a tobacco merchant, a partner in the South Sugar House and a prominent wine importer.

George also inherited the lands of Auchincruive in South Ayrshire from his uncle Richard Oswald. Richard  and Alexander had helped start the career of their cousin Richard becoming a merchant.  He served an apprenticeship with them. He became a successful merchant, but a notorious trader in enslaved labour.

The story of these other Oswalds is for another day…