Memory Lane: Dunfermline talk to consider 'Who was Andrew Carnegie?"

Sharron McColl, Local Studies Supervisor in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, will be delivering the first of a series of ‘Carnegie Lectures’ that will take place in the Canmore Room in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries Library.

Entitled ‘Who was Andrew Carnegie’, it will take place on Monday, November 25 at 6.30pm.

Having worked in Dunfermline Carnegie Library for the past 30 years, Sharron is ideally qualified to speak about the life of one of the world’s greatest ever philanthropists.

Our first and second photographs show different views of the cottage Carnegie was born in, and that he describes in his autobiography: "To begin then, I was born in Dunfermline in the attic of the small one-storey house on the corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane on November 25. 1835, and as the saying is, 'of poor but honest parents, of good kith and kin’.

The cottage in Dunfermline where Andrew Carnegie was born. (Image: Contributed) "Dunfermline had long been noted as the centre of the damask trade in Scotland. My father William Carnegie was a damask weaver, the son of Andrew Carnegie after whom I was named.”

Our next photograph is of Andrew Carnegie's home in New York, located at 2 East 91st Street at Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Andrew Carnegie moved into his newly completed mansion in late 1902 and lived there until his death in 1919.

The building is now the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution. The surrounding area, part of the larger Upper East Side neighborhood, has come to be called Carnegie Hill.

Andrew Carnegie's New York home. (Image: Contributed) Andrew Carnegie's widow Louise continued to live there until her death in 1946.

The eminent Pittsburgh historian Rick Sebak recently uncovered an interesting story surrounding the house. Donald Trump's mother Mary Anne MacLeod emigrated as an 18 year old young woman in May 1930 to New York City from the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

She found a job working as a servant for Louise and according to records may have stayed there as long as four years according to Rick Sebak: "Donald Trump rarely talks about his mother who passed away in August 2000. Her connection to the Carnegie Mansion is noted on the Wikipedia page for Louise Whitfield Carnegie, where it states that Mary Anne MacLeod indicated that she was a maid to Mrs. Carnegie on a U.S. Census form. I like the unexpected connection."

Tickets for the Carnegie lecture on Friday, November 25 in the Canmore Room in DCLG are on sale at Eventbrite by scanning the QR code.

Sharron McColl will deliver her Carnegie Lecture on November 25. (Image: Contributed) They are also available online at Onfife, in person at Carnegie Hall box office and from Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries priced £5.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries as well as at facebook.com/olddunfermline.

With thanks to Frank Connelly.