| Ref No | MS 3219/3/1/5 |
| Title | Account books of James Watt of Greenock with Robert Finlay |
| Level | Sub Series |
| Date | 1749 - 1753 |
| Description | Robert Finlay was a merchant in Glasgow who joined James Watt of Greenock and David Cation as a partner in various shipping business about 1748. The ships involved were the 'Grand Turk', the 'Archibald', the 'Glasgow Fisher' and the 'Crawford'. This account book consists mostly of annual lists of letters from 1749 to 1753, advising receipt of money etc. by Finlay, headed 'Substance of sundrie leter w[i]t[h] cash from Robert Finlay & for what'. There is an entry under 15 June 1750, which shows that another partner called Walter Maxwell was taken on. |
| Related Material | A single receipt from 1744 was discovered at Doldowlod in 2002 and donated to the City Archives. It is listed in the ‘Later additions to the papers of James Watt and Family’ part of the MS 3219 catalogue.
The Watt and Muirhead papers were microfilmed by Adam Matthew Publications as part of Industrial Revolution: A Documentary History. ‘Muirhead I’ was published in Series One: part 2 in 1993; ‘Muirhead II-IV’ in Series One: parts 6 and 8, in 1997; and the ‘James Watt Papers’ in Series Three, in 1999. All the microfilms are available in Birmingham City Archives. |
| Physical Description | Volumes |
| Access Status | Open |
| CreatorName | James Watt of Greenock |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Three Generations of Watts. Extracts from the Doldowlod Papers, by Julian Gibson-Watt (1995), has a section on the trading correspondence of James Watt of Greenock and on the Finlay & Cation papers. [B&W Pamphlets G/7] |