The American Cup was the US's first football, soccer, trophy. And from any reading of its origins, at least as far as we know them, certain teams - Clark ONT, Caledonian Thistle, Paterson and Kearny Rangers, four of the six to have taken part in the Cup's first playing -and names - Lennox, Craig, Hood and Grant - immediately stand out for their source - Scotland. Add one more, Turner, and we have almost a full house, with only one - John Grant - with no known back-story thus far for the simple reason that he played for New York FBC and in that metropolis there were a multitude of possible candidates by name, age and probable nationality.

So to the ones we think we known at least something about. The first American Cup was won by ONT. Its Scots story has already been covered in this blog, see First Flourish and Kearny. The year was 1885.  New York was the team vanquished with its seeming complement again of Scots but there was one more on the field that day. The man without whom the game could not have gone ahead, the referee, was a James Lennox.

James Lennox was not only a man with a whistle but also a player, for Kearny Rangers. He had featured in its team earlier in the competition.  To trade he was a carpenter, born in Scotland in 1859 but it is not known where precisely. He seems to have arrived in America as a machinist in 1879 aged twenty, from Glasgow and with other members of his family. In 1880 he is living in Harrison by Kearny with his siblings and widowed mother> But he was soon to meet and marry Elizabeth Thornton, also Scots-born.