James Watt was born at Greenock, on the Clyde, on the 19th of January, 1736. His parents were of the middle class, industrious, intelligent, and religious people, with a character for probity which had descended to them from their “forbears,” and was cherished as their proudest inheritance. James Watt was thus emphatically well-born. His father and grandfather both held local offices of trust, and honourable mention is made of them in the records of Greenock. His grandfather, Thomas Watt, was the first of the family who lived in that neighbourhood. He had migrated thither from the county of Aberdeen, where his father was a small farmer in the time of Charles I. It is supposed that he took part with the Covenanters in resisting the Marquis of Montrose in his sudden descent upon Aberdeen at the head of his wild Highlanders in the autumn of 1644; and that the Covenanting farmer was killed in one of the battles that ensued. The district was ravaged by the victorious Royalists; the crops were destroyed, cattle lifted, dwellings burnt; and many of the inhabitants fled southwards for refuge in more peaceful districts. Hence Thomas Watt’s migration to Cartsdyke, where we find him settled as a teacher of navigation and mathematics, about the middle of the seventeenth century. [Illustration: CRAWFORDSBURN HOUSE, NEAR GREENOCK.] Cartsdyke, or Crawfordsdyke, was then a village situated a little to the east of Greenock, though now forming part of it. Crawfordsburn House, still standing, was the residence of the lord of the manor, and is a good specimen of the old-fashioned country mansion. It is beautifully situated on the high ground overlooking the Clyde. In former times a green slope stretched down from it towards the beach, along which lay the village, consisting of about a hundred cottages, mostly thatched. Cartsdyke was, however, in early times, a place of greater importance than Greenock. It had a pier, which Greenock as yet had not; and from this pier the first Clyde ship which crossed the Atlantic sailed for Darien in 1697. What little enterprise existed in the neighbourhood was identified with Cartsdyke rather than with Greenock; and hence Thomas Watt’s preference for it, in setting up there as a teacher. He, too, like his sire, seems to have been a sturdy Covenanter; for we find him, in 1683, refusing to take the test in favour of prelacy, and he was consequently proclaimed to be a “disorderly schoolmaster officiating contrary to law.” He nevertheless continued the teaching of the mathematics, in which he seems to have prospered, as, besides marrying a wife, he shortly after bought the house and garden which he occupied, and subsequently added to his possessions a tenement in the neighbouring village of Greenock.