The Rangers Annual General Meeting 1879.
This gem of an article that we recently discovered details our 1879 Annual Meeting held in Dewar’s Temperance Hotel at number 11 Bridge Street which today is Cumbrae House.
It’s an important location on the Founders Trail.
Six years earlier the Scottish Football Association was formed in Dewar’s Hotel, but unfortunately the young Rangers didn’t receive an invitation to join as they weren’t being taken seriously at this stage by senior clubs such as Queens Park.
It's fascinating that so many committee positions are being filled by players from our first seven years, a few of whom are pictured here.
Across the road from Dewars at Number 14 stood Bridge Street Train Station .
Tom Vallance left from this station for India to work on a tea-plantation in February 1882.
Newspaper reports at the time stated that “a large crowd of well-wishers gathered on the platform to see Mr. Vallance off and his friends at the Rangers Club presented him with 50 sovereigns as a thank you for his years of service”. That presentation was held in Maitland’s Hotel which stood to the right of the stations entrance.
That grand building was sadly demolished when Central Station was expanded in 1901. Tom Vallance would return to Glasgow and his Club within a year after becoming seriously ill in India which was to sadly curtail his playing career.
The return of Tom Vallance was in fact a god-send and he was to quickly take control of the Club being voted in as President at the 1883 Annual Meeting.