This piece was first written almost a decade ago. Since then it has been added to but the "Mystery" was never quite resolved. The original hung upon careful research but some speculation but time passes, new facts emerge and now I think it is fair to say the mystery is no more and pure satisfaction is the result. It is almost certain the Duncan McComish, Mexican footballing pioneer, who for a long while remained elusive was born in 1872 on Merrywell Brae in Kirriemuir, was married in 1898 in Orizaba, Mexico to Maria Moreno, had nine children with her and died in 1930 in Puebla de los Angeles still in Mexico. It is also clear that he did grow up in Dundee and now, who both his parents were. In December 1861 James McComish married Christina Rankin McDonald, he under the name McOmish, she as Christiana Rankine McDonell. Names then were still fluid. He was twenty-one year-old Railway Porter, as it turns out born in Crieff and, as a wee aside, in August that same year had been subject to a paternity claim against him from an Ann Tozet of Braco, she twenty-two. and a Housekeeper The wedding took place in Tradeston in Glasgow. They both gave their addresses as Denny. His father was a Forester, hers a Carpenter.
QED
There is a disagreement about what was what they call in Mexico their “cradle of football”. Some say it was the mining town of Pachuca; others say it was the textile city of Orizaba. If it were the former then it was William Blamey, born Frank William Blamey, nicknamed by the Mexicans, El Manco, “One-Armed”, for obvious reasons, who was probably the instigator; if it were the latter then it was the elusively mysterious Duncan Macomish, but all agree it began with the British.
Miners from the Britain Isles had begun to arrive in Mexico in the 1820s, shortly after independence from Spain, to try their luck at exploiting the riches in the mountains of the province of Hildalgo between Mexico City and the Caribbean Sea to the east at Tampico. Around Pachuca, particularly at Mineral del Monte, several mines were opened – not least Santa Gertrudis and La Blanca, both owned by Francis Rule, known locally as The Silver King – recruiting workers in a more organised fashion from the mining areas of Britain. Blamey himself is said to have been both Cornish, as were many of the other miners, and Scottish. The former is more likely. He was probably born near Redruth in 1879. It was he, on a visit in 1900 or 1901 from Pachuca to Mexico City, who saw children at the British Schools in Mixcoac and Tacubaya playing with proper footballs. He found out they had been bought at the City sports shop, Casa Spaulding, which has received a consignment from England, went to the shop in Calle de Capuchinas, bought one and returned to Pachuca with it.
Orizaba is a different story. To the south of Pachuca on the railway that was built between the Caribbean port of Veracruz and Mexico City and opened in 1873, it lies at 4,000 ft below the snow-capped volcano of the same name. The mountain, at 18,491ft, is the highest peak in Mexico. Its name is said to mean “happy waters” and from its slopes came the hydro-power needed to drive the mills, including textile mills, mostly financed from abroad, that grew up in the valleys below. The new industries needed technical know-how and much of it, as elsewhere in the World at the time, came from Britain.
There is no real information on who was Duncan MacComish, except that he was Scottish, also known elsewhere and later in life in Mexico as Duncan Macomish MacDonald. In Scotland he is said to have played football at a decent level, arriving in Mexico shortly before 1898, and that in that same year he married in Orizaba a local girl, a dusky Senorita Maria Moreno. The marriage is recorded in the local records. He is elsewhere variously described as the owner of a local steel factory, which is unlikely, or that he worked in the Fibras Duras de Yute, a jute factory at Santa Gertrudis that had been opened in 1897; as a “spinner” in some accounts, or a “dyer” in others. He is said to have had at least one child, a son, and to have spent the rest of his life in Mexico. We do know what he looked like and that he was a big man, even in comparison with his fellow, European factory workers, head and shoulders above the others in the Orizaba football team he is said to have founded.
“Fibras Duras de Yute”, Yute Hard Fibres or the Santa Gertrudis Jute Mill Company Ltd. as it was known in the UK was said to have been founded by another Scots origin, Thomas Francis Kinnell, recorded elsewhere as a "Canvas and Jute Manufacturer, whose father was Dunfermline-born but seems to have emigrated to and remained in Narva, then in Russia, now just in Estonia, the major centre for the growing of flax and where flax and jute is still a local industry. In fact the real power was in all probability Weetman Pearson, who from 1910 would be raised to the peerage as Lord and then Viscount Cowdray. An engineer, in 1880 he took over the family construction firm and was invited in 1889 to build a railway in Mexico by that country's president. He then became heavily involved in the Mexican oil industry having clearly dabbled in other industrial projects, involving family members. A director until his death in 1898 of the Santa Gertrudis Jute Mill was Sir John Cass, a Yorkshire wool merchant, one of whose daughters, Annie, had become Weetman Pearson's wife and another, Gertrude, was married, albeit briefly until divorce in 1897, to Thomas Kinnell.
Kinnell and Weetman had the factory built in the newly developing suburb of Santa Gertrudis about a kilometre and a half from the centre of Orizaba, close to the railway station. The district is still called "Jute". The ruined factory is still there. Later, beside the factory an area was cleared in 1893 for a 6-hole golf course (the golf course is still there as are streets that are still called Britain, London, Wales, Ireland and Scotland), then for cricket and finally football for the factory’s British employees, many of them also Scots. Macomish was not just a footballer. He also played cricket and it was with cricket that British team sports in Orizaba began in 1898 at the Orizaba Athletic Club, the first cricket league in Mexico beginning in 1899. The team was first known as Santa Gertrudis Jute Mill Company, becoming in 1900 the Orizaba Cricket Club. Members of it included Macomish, A. Curtis, J.A. Patterson, J. Ashton, Alexander Kinnell, said to be a younger brother of the factory’s founder but perhaps actually not, and R.J. White, names which would all also soon feature on the football field.
It was not until 1902 that a formal football team emerged with the support of the factory management in Orizaba, although there may have been kick-abouts with a rough ball before then. However, it was 300 kilometres away to the north in Pachuca, that there had already been stirrings of “the beautiful game”. On a Saturday afternoon in November 1900 eleven men met, all British, a mixture of English, Welsh, Scottish and Cornish, all employees of mining companies, to discuss the formation of a football team. The result was the Pachuca Athletic Club and there followed an invitation, a suggestion, to British sporting clubs in Mexico City, some 55 miles away, of a football tournament.
The suggestion appears especially enthusiastically received by the Reforma Athletic Club, founded in 1894. From its membership James Walker, A.J. Campbell, T.R. Philips, A.T. Drysdale, F. Robertson and E.W. Jackson, perhaps five of six Scots, began the formation of the first football team in the Mexican capital and the preparation of a pitch. In elegant surroundings, 120 metres by 65 metres, it was where the sports club, Deportivo Chapultepec, still is to be found, close to the city centre. Goals with cross-bars were constructed and erected and nets ordered from England.
It has to be supposed that the invitation friendly game between Pachuca and the Reforma Athletic Club was played in 1901 and from it emerged to idea of a larger tournament; a Mexican league. In 1902 the Reforma Athletic Club, the British Club and the Mexico Cricket Club met in Mexico City. Invitations were set to Pachuca and to Orizaba for them to join the league and they were accepted. The Committee of the Mexican League of Amateur Association Football was formed with Gilbert Varley of the British Club as Secretary, 19-year old Robert Blackmore of Reforma as Treasurer and one of Mexico’s Blackmore dynasty, and the teams captains as club representatives – Clifford of the British Club, Butlin, of Reforma, Penny of Mexico C. C., Blamey of Pachuca and R.J.White of Orizaba.
Where the first Mexican league game was played is unclear. One account says one took place in Mexico City on 19th October 1902 at the British club ground in the presence of the British Ambassador. Perhaps it was simply the Reforma-Pachuca friendly with the unspecified teams playing just 35 minutes each way because of fears about the altitude of the Mexican capital. And it may have been followed by another friendly, Reforma against “England”, other English players in the city, and a third against “Scotland”, for which no explanation is needed.
Another account, the one now generally accepted as describing the first league game, has it that on Sunday, 14th December 1902 on the football field beside the railway station in Orizaba the local team met the British Club from Mexico City. Orizaba went on to win, 1:0 and we even know the teams and their strips. Orizaba, playing 2-3-5, in black shirts and white shorts, were, in goal. J. Donachie, the backs. R.J. White (captain) and J. Hanson, half backs, J. Snowden, Kline, and A. Shaw and the forwards, Duncan Macomish, perhaps aged 30, W. Stewart, Alexander Kinnell, J.A. Patterson and Christie, all apparently Scots with the exception of White. And facing them, the British Club with three of their star players unable to be there, Percy Clifford, Crowder and Arthur Hogg, in chocolate brown shirts and white shorts were goalie, N.P. Dewar, the backs, Backs. F. Hogg (now captain) and H.J. Holt, the half backs, Adamson, R.S. Jeffcock and A .W. Varley and the forwards, J.P. McNabb, actually James Fairgrieve McNabb, E(van) Jones or Johns, R.A.H. Watson, E.A.E. Halliwell and J.C. McMillan, again numbering several Scots.
The next round of matches took place on New Year’s Day, 1903, when Orizaba beat Pachuca away, again 1:0. In the meantime Reforma had also won its matches and the scene was set for the showdown on 11th January at Orizaba. The day did not start well for the club from the capital. One of the Reforma team, missed the train, not once but twice. They only had 10 players and Robert Blackmore, although there, could not play because of injury. Even so the result was a 2:2 draw, fittingly the captain, White, and Macomish scoring for the home side, with Johnson and Butlin on target for the visitors. One game remained of the season with Orizaba at home to the Mexico C. C. Through the season Mexico C.C. had also had trouble getting a team together. This last game was no exception. They failed to travel. Orizaba thus won by default and the Scots of Orizaba were crowned first Mexican champions having won three games, one by default, scoring four goals and conceding two. They had accumulated seven points, one more than Reforma. However, it was noted accurately if somewhat churlishly in Mexico City in the English-language Mexican Herald that had Mexico C.C. made the fixture and drawn or won Reforma and not Orizaba would have been champions. Orizaba’s response is not recorded but might have been a version of, “Aye, reet” or worse, not least because between the penultimate and last rounds of the league another match had taken place. The date was 6th January. Mexican England had faced Mexican Scotland and, although Kinnell and MacComish are said to have scored both the latter's goals the Auld Enemy had put five in the Scots net.
Many of the names of the people, who took part in those first games can found on the passenger lists of the ships that ploughed the routes between Britain, the West Indies and the Mexican Caribbean sea ports of Tampico and Veracruz, the major exception being Duncan Macomish. However, if there is no Macomish, there is a D. Mcdonald. He had stepped ashore in Veracruz with a Mr. Stewart and two others, whose names are difficult to make out on the manifest but could be “Luchairs” and “McEritt”, seemingly four Scots wanderers together. The year was 1892. And he was one of three male Mcdonald/Macdonalds to arrive at the same port within 4 years. J. McDonald arrived in 1893 and a P. MacDonald in 1896.
And there was also a starting point in perhaps finding Duncan MComish's origins. The centre of the jute trade in the old country was Dundee and there in 1881 at 1, Alexander Street just yards from the mills was a James McOmish, aged 40, living with his spouse, Christina, and 7 children, all boys – Daniel, aged 18, born in Denny in Stirlingshire, John, James, a Duncan, aged 8, so born in about 1873 and in Kirriemuir, Peter and William. A decade later an older James senior is now recorded as Macomesh. Christina is with him still, as are all the boys except John. Duncan is now 19, described specifically as a “dyer” and they are all living still in Dundee round the corner from Alexander St. at 26, Powrie Place.
Crucially also for the Duncan Macomish in Dundee, in 1881 there was only one alternative in Scotland – a fourteen year-old in Leith in Edinburgh. In 1891 he is also there in Edinburgh as, again crucially, unlike the Dundee Duncan he still is in 1901 and therefore could not be in Mexico playing cricket or even football.
The James McOmish or Macomesh in Dundee can be traced both back and forward. In 1911 he is still in the city. In 1861 he is lodging in a house in Dunblane in Stirlingshire, single and working as a railway porter. In 1871 he is in Denny with a young family. Young Duncan’s birth in Kirriemuir can be found actually in 1872. His father can be traced back to a childhood in and around Crieff in rural Perthshire and his mother's birthplace is given as both “Glenloy”, Inverness, with the immediate possibility of Glengloy by Fort William, and Inverary in Argyll. However, there is no recorded marriage. A marriage certificate would have given the maiden name of the bride but there is an alternative. Duncan’s birth certificate gives it as McDonald, no Christina McDonald is registered in Inverary but there is one was registered at birth in March 1840 in Urquhart and Glenmoriston in Inverness-shire. And her mother, Catherine, is born in “Glenluie”, perhaps Glenloy or even Glenloyne by another name. Perhaps Christina’s mother Catherine, as was often the case, had gone home to her mother to have her daughter, from where is not clear but it could have been Dundee.
It is a lot of "perhaps" but if a family background of sorts fits together, it is still not proof that the Duncan Macomish in Mexico was the same Duncan Macomesh from Dundee. Nor is it proof that Duncan Macomish from Dundee had to be called McDonald on his passport when travelling to Mexico because his parents were never married and his mother’s maiden name was just that. However, equally it is not impossible. Certainly, even if Duncan preferred to take his father’s name, in Hispanic countries it is common practice to place the mother’s maiden name after the father’s to create the full name. Hence, someone we in Britain might call Duncan McDonald (or MacDonald) Macomish, in Mexico would be known as Duncan Macomish MacDonald, precisely as he is in several Mexican football reports.
However, there are also other factors, which are at least curiously coincidental. Firstly there are the other McDonalds, P and J, that arrived in Veracruz in the 1890s. Duncan from Dundee’s immediately younger brother was Peter. Older brothers were John and James. Secondly, if Duncan Macomish from Dundee had travelled to Mexico in 1892 he would have shown in Dundee on the 1891 census, which he did. Thirdly, when he travelled he would have been 20 years old, at an age when football would have been a passion in a city where the sport was exploding and a personal passion for a boy growing up with it. Where he lived in both 1891 and 1881 is less than a mile from both current grounds of Dundee and Dundee United. Of course, in 1892 neither club existed. Dundee East End and Dundee Our Boys combined to become Dundee in 1893, playing at West Craigie Park, again nearby, and then Carolina Port by the docks until the move to Dens Park in 1899. The main opposition in the city was then not Dundee United but Dundee Wanderers, which in 1891 became Johnstone Wanderers, then Strathmore and Dundonians, finally reverting to Dundee Wanderers once more. They played at the Dock St. ground and then Clepington Park, which we know now as Tannadice. A young Duncan could have played for any of the local clubs, senior or junior.
Back in Mexico after winning the championship in early 1903 football became the focal point of British sporting activity in Orizaba. The decision was taken that the next season teams would play the others home and away to make it fairer. A pavilion was built at the sports ground but it was a brief flowering. There were industrial problems at the Jute factory during 1903-4. There were strikes and the British workers began to drift away presumably because due to the walk-outs they were not being paid. The weather was also poor, fixtures were cancelled as the result of heavy rains and for away games there were problems getting a team together. At the end of the season with Mexico C. C. crowned champions, Orizaba F.C. folded, to be reformed only in 1916. What became of Duncan Macomish was unknown, except the possibility of a daughter born towards the end of the decade still in Mexico but to the north on the US border in Monterrey and the same possibility of him eventually settling and dying across the border. Indeed there is a record in 1920 of a D. McComish as a crew-member of boat in New Orleans, a D. McComish described as English and single but interestingly aged forty-seven at the time so born in 1873 or perhaps 1872, just as Dundee's Duncan McComish had been. But there is an alternative, that Duncan and Maria MacComish had not just one child but nine and settled in the city of Puebla de los Angeles, which lies almost exactly halfway between Orizaba and Mexico City. And it is there that in Puebla in 1930 Duncan is said to have passed away aged fifty-seven or fifty-eight, to which can be added one last and sad curiosity.
In January 1981 a young man died in Mexico City. He was twenty-six years old so born in about 1955. His mother was Juana Gomez, his wife Dalida Cruz and his father, was a Hector MacComish, precisely the same name as the late young-man himself. And it was not a coincidence. One of Duncan's children with Maria was indeed Hector, so Hector Snr. was his son and Hector Jnr his grandson.