Geograph - photograph every grid square

On this occasion, I had entered the cemetery mainly to see how much damage had been caused by the recent storms. I was pleased to find that, after the clean-up, the John Proudfoot monument was now better exposed to view. I had photographed it before, but it was largely obscured by trees at that time: NS4076 : The John Proudfoot Memorial.

The link just given provides some information on John Proudfoot, although it should be noted that not all of the sources can be relied on, or are in agreement. According to the most reliable author, John Proudfoot was "born in Dumbartonshire" (a greater number of sources say that he was born in Glasgow, but those sources are not independent: they all appear to have been based upon a single book, one that is too error-ridden to qualify as a useful reference work, but which has curiosity value for the modern reader on account of its laughable chauvinism).

Proudfoot would prosper in business in South America, but only after expending much effort, for little reward, in the first few years (not least in his efforts to grow cotton). Commendably, he was never ashamed of those difficult beginnings, and his statue (sculpted by Sir John Steell) shows him hard at work in the heat of South America, his jacket slung over his shoulder.

One of the companies in which he was a partner was John Proudfoot and Co, merchants and commission agents, trading in Liverpool and in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; they traded as Proudfoot, Hall and Co in Montevideo (then styled Monte Video, as on the inscription). The paddle steamer São Pedro was built for Proudfoot and Co in 1867 by T. Wingate and Company, shipbuilders on the Clyde; it was used in trade with South America.

Proudfoot was also one of the founders of the River Plate Telegraph Company, in which role he would become involved in the laying of submarine cables.