Alexander Davidson, or Sandy as he was known, was a tenant craftsman working out of the local blacksmith’s at Netherton hamlet in the Angus parish of Aberlemno. The work was a continuous round of making and repairing cartwheels, fashioning wooden shafts for implements and repairing agricultural carts. He and his wife Margaret lived with their six children in a tied cottage next to the blacksmith’s; accommodation they also shared with two other workers, on the estate of Lord Minto who owned the land and largely governed the lives of the people who lived and worked there

At the age of 52, Sandy and his wife emigrated in search of a better life for their family in 1857 to Milwaukee, where work in the railroad industry would enable middle son William go on to help create the Harley-Davidson motor cycle whose appeal was initially to enable men to go fishing.   Founded in 1903, Harley Davidson was one of only two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression. With a worldwide presence, it has become associated with the chopper style. 

The restoration of the cottage has been painstaking but highly rewarding. It took several years of planning to reclaim a derelict property and transform it into a living re-creation of a mid-nineteenth century dwelling. It is hard to visit the site and not feel the frisson of history surrounded by the rolling landscape of the Angus countryside, and the Davidsons would still recognize many things in the parish of Aberlemno

Images: The Davidson Legacy, with thanks.