That three men, three Scots, Robert Reid, Andrew Gemmell and David Scott, were in 1894 in the port city of Valparaiso founders and, as Treasurer, Secretary and President respectively, first office-holders of the Chilean Football Federation is known and undoubted. But more research from the country cast up another name as Honorary President, Peter (Pedro) Ewing, and the knowledge from Chilean records that he is described also as a Scot and by birth.

Moreover, just a year later in 1895 a Peter Ewing, again described as a Scot, arrived with his Chilean wife, Graciana, for a stay in New York, he a merchant, aged fifty-four, so born in 1840-41. Furthermore the couple can be seen travelling to the United Kingdom in both 1897 and 1907. And the details in all cases matched a Pedro Ewing, again said to be a Scot, who would die in Portales, a suburb of the Chilean capital in 1912, with the additional information that he was seventy-one, born in 1841, his wife having been Graciana nee Acuna, be buried in the city's Protestant cemetery and, Chilean-style, that his father's name was Archibaldo and his mother's Isabel "MacLearn". And a Pedro Ewing is also shown in 1866 as having married a Graciana, a Graciana Acuna, again in Portales, with his father's name  given as Archibald, his mother's once more as Isabel and one of the witnesses another Scot, Robert Russell. Moreover, said Pedro and Graciana were from 1868 to have had at least five sons, all Chilean-born, Victor, Pedro, Jorje (Jorge), Alfredo and Roberto, with Victor, becoming Chilean Military Attache in Washington D.C. and  Jorje, George Dan, a decade later than his father himself to have been a key figure in the foundation of organised football but in Santiago itself.  

However, the fly in this ointment of information was that there is no obvious record of a Peter Ewing, born in Scotland in or near either of the years in question with an Archibald father and an Isabel McLearn as a mother, although for 1841 church-records only have to be relied upon. Nor was there even, again in Scotland, a marriage of two such parents. But there was in 1841 one Ewing family recorded with an Archie, not an Isabel but an Isabella McLean and a young child of the right age. Moreover, they lived in Bonhill in Dunbartonshire, soon enough post 1872 to become a centre of footballing activity in the Auld country. But there was a problem. The wee boy's name was James. 

Thus it was that the search turned to Peter Ewings more generally but born still in Scotland in about 1840 with an Archibald as a father and one stood out. He was born in about 1842 in St. Ninians by Stirling, one of eight children, but at the age of nine he and the family were staying in Glasgow, his father, son of a Balfron farmer, a currier to trade, his mother, the daughter of a local weaver, not a McLearn or a McLean but a McLaren and not an Isabel but an Elizabeth. So it was a return to the Chilean records for a deeper search and there more checking revealed "McLearn" to be a misspelling. Pedro was indeed Peter McLaren Ewing. Moreover, "Isabel" was elsewhere recorded as Elizabeth.

And with that a story unfolded. At nine young Peter he was at school. At nineteen in 1861 he was himself an apprentice currier. However, by 1871, whilst the parents were still in Glasgow, indeed they would die there, she in 1874, he in 1880, both in The Gorbals, he was not. In fact he disappears post-1861 entirely from the Scottish, indeed British records, with the strong possibility that on reaching maturity in 1862 he might have found his way to Chile and a new life probably, but not necessarily immediately, a long way from skins, leather and cloth. Moreover, thanks to the unstinting cooperation of the Chilean football historian, Sebastian Nunez Mardones, we might also know, if we have the right man, his last resting-place. It is in the Ewing-family mausoleum confirmed as in Santiago's General Cemetery but its Dissident i.e. Protestant section, indeed with the plaque to the door's left specifically his.