THE photographs in this week’s trip down West Fife’s Memory Lane look at aspects of the life of Andrew Carnegie, who was born in Dunfermline in 1835.

Sharron McColl, local studies supervisor in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, will be delivering a ‘Carnegie Lecture’ entitled, ‘The Life of Andrew Carnegie’, in the Carnegie Birthplace Museum on Wednesday, September 28, at 7.30pm.

Having worked in Dunfermline Carnegie Library for the past 30 years, Sharron is ideally qualified to speak about the life of one of the world’s greatest-ever philanthropists.

Sharron’s lecture will range over Carnegie’s upbringing in Dunfermline, his emigration to Pittsburgh, marriage to Louise Whitfield, the fallout from the labour dispute in Homestead, the sale of his steel empire to J P Morgan which made him the richest man in the world and his attachment to Skibo Castle in his later life which Carnegie referred to as ‘Heaven on earth’.

The postcard featured here is of the cottage Andrew Carnegie was born in. In his autobiography, Carnegie writes: “To begin then, I was born in Dunfermline, in the attic of the small one-storey house, corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane, on 25th November 1835, and as the saying is ‘of poor but honest parents, of good kith and kin’. Dunfermline had long been noted as the centre of the damask trade in Scotland. My father, William Carnegie, was a damask weaver, the son of Andrew Carnegie after whom I was named.”

The next image is of the very first Carnegie Library in the world in Dunfermline. Carnegie gifted mote than 3,000 libraries, including 147 in Scotland.

Sharron has, to date, found 145 of them and has only two sites still to find in her researches. Carnegie’s mother, Margaret, laid the foundation stone for this building in 1881 on a trip home to Dunfermline from Pittsburgh where they had emigrated to in 1847. The building was opened to the public in 1883 and still stands today, having since been extended and now incorporated into Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries.

The next image is of Andrew Carnegie laying the foundation stone for the Peace Palace in the Hague on July 30 that coincided with the Second Hague Peace Conference. The building, funded by Carnegie, opened six years later.

The final image is of the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Carnegie in Pittencrieff Park in 1914 when more than 20,000 people turned out to watch the ceremony (a number that exceeded the population of Dunfermline at that time). Designed by Richard R Goulden, it was funded by public subscription and erected ‘in memory of his princely gifts to his native city’.

Tickets for the talk on ‘The Life of Andrew Carnegie’, priced £5, are on sale online at Bit.ly/ABCMEvent as well as from the Carnegie Birthplace Museum in person between 11am and 3pm each day.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries as well as at facebook.com/olddunfermline.

With thanks to Frank Connelly.