Perhaps one the best ways to track the spread of football, geographically, numerically and chronologically, through the United States is by passion, Scottish passion for the game and hence the formation of clubs with obvious Scots connections notably but not necessarily by the inclusion of "Caledonian" or "Thistle" in their titles. Here is a list by foundation date. There is no claim that it is comprehensive but it is indicative. 

1873           Caledonians                                   New York City

1874           Caledonians                                   Richmond, Virginia

1876           North Scotlands                           Hartford, Connecticut

                    South Scotlands

1881            Thistles                                            St. Louis, Missouri

1883            Caledonian Thistles                   Paterson, New Jersey

1884            ONT                                                  Kearny, New Jersey

      Rangers                                           Kearny, New Jersey

                    Thistles                                            New York

1885            Thistles                                           Paterson, New Jersey

                    Vale of Clyde                                 River Point, by Providence, Rhode Island

1886            Caledonians                                  Newark, New Jersey

      Caledonians                                  Danbury, Connecticut

      Caledonians                                  Newark, New Jersey

      Glenirons                                       Saylesville, by Pawtucket Rhode Island

      Clydes                                              River Point, by Providence Rhode Island

1888            Caledonians                                  Scranton, Pennsylvania

                    Thistles                                            Chicago, Illinois

                    Thistles                                            Minneapolis, Minnesota

1889            Scottish Shields                            Chicago, Illinois

                     Scotia Athletics                           Holyoke, by Springfield, Massachusetts

                     Thistles                                           Lonsdale, by Pawtucket, Rhode Island

1890            Thistles                                           Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

                     Caledonians                                  Springfield, Massachusetts

                     Thistles                                           San Francisco, California

That New York was the entry-point might be expected and from there geographically/chronologically the only aberration seems to be St. Louis, as it is in much of the history of US Soccer. Even then it is about the city's first club. And that California, specifically the still very European San Francisco, is amongst the last might is also hardly surprising. Yet for the purposes of this article it is the centre-piece, not at its very beginning but fifteen years after foundation. We have the above picture of the San Francisco Thistles team of 1905. In 1902 it had been Officials are Messrs. Hunter and King and the players are row-by-row from the top Forest, Lowe and Tierney, then McGregor, Duncan and Taylor. However, it is the front-row that really drew my attention. It is R. Disher, Smith, Lydon, T. Disher and A. Disher, including three, a quarter of the team, with the same surname, a helpfully distinctive one but not on the face of it obviously Scots. The initial assumption was that they were ringers, pioneering ringers it seemed, but we were wrong.

In fact the three similarly moustachioed Dishers appear to have been brothers, Robert, Thomas and Andrew and in that age-order. Moreover, they were in fact very much Scots. The family was from Fife, their father, also Thomas Cairns Disher and mother, nee Elizabeth Chalmers, were both born in Wemyss, perhaps in Methil itself, as was Thomas Jnr and in 1879. And their surname was not American but mistaken Scottish-census orthography. It was originally Dishart, perhaps Dysart. However, the family had moved, albeit temporarily, from Fife to Renfrewshire, to Greenock. It seems they were already there in 1873. Robert was born there that year, in 1881, once more in 1891, with Thomas Snr. a Ships Plater, seventeen year-old Robert, the second oldest of ten children, an Apprentice Grocer, Thomas Jnr. five years younger and Andrew five more still. And the family is still there in 1901, Andrew also an Apprentice Grocer but no sign of Thomas Jnr. He, an Iron Moulder, was already on his way to America, arriving with his father in California that same year with the others following on, Robert in 1902 with his new wife, Elizabeth Gaston also Wemyss-born, and Andrew with his mother and the youngest brother, William, in 1903.

It meant that all three brothers, all in their twenties, were well in place by 1905 and employing the skills on the West-Coast American soccer field they themselves had learned in the Auld Country, and watched at Cappielow, Greenock Morton's ground since 1879, the club founded in 1874. By 1910 Robert, a "Retail Merchant" was living in San Francisco with his wife and two sons, Thomas, born in Scotland, and James born in the USA. Simultaneously Thomas Jnr. was across the Bay in Alameda with his Glasgow-born wife, also Elizabeth, a daughter, Margaret, and a son, Robert, as was Andrew, with his aunt, nee Disher and her Scots-born husband, James Grant.  By 1920 Robert was a "Grocerman", living the family now in Alameda, Thomas in Vallejo, still on the bay and Andrew still in Alameda, an engineer working on the ferries. And it would be in The Bay area that the extending family would remain. Thomas Snr. would die in 1929, Elizabeth in 1930 both in San Francisco. Robert would die still in Alameda in 1957. He would be preceded in 1955 by Thomas Jnr. in Marin County, north of the Golden Gate and is buried to its south at Cypress Lawns. Andrew would outlive them both, dying in 1960 and in Alameda once more, all three un-lauded, not least for their major contribution in taking football, Scots football, to central California and planting it there. The Californian Soccer Association North, based in San Francisco, was founded in 1902 as the Californian State Football Association just as the Dishers arrived, ordinary, working-class Scots carrying the extra-ordinary, national, sporting passion clearly joining countrymen. Others of the handful of Frisco teams in that founding year were Burns and Albion Rovers. By 1909 there were fourteen. And, whilst 3,000 miles to east the New York State Football Association had been formed in 1886, North California's southern equivalent, just 450 miles distant, did not come into existence until 1974.