And when you are done looking at this site for the Scots input on football world-wide, here are two more.
For those who literally want to trace on the ground the local development of Scots and Scottish football in our own and other countries there is the newly available and ever-expanding site of:
The Scots Football Historians' Group
And on Scottish sports history in general but inevitably including fitba', see Andy Mitchell's inestimable:
The Ballantynes of Venezuela
It is thought that some sort of football was played in Venezuela in 1876. Said to organised by a Welshman but one with the suspiciously Scottish sounding name of A.W. Simpson, the game or games took place at a mine near El Callao not too distant from the border with present day Guyana. Participating are said to be English, French, German and Italian workers. However, there are problems with the account. The first is that football as we know it had barely reached Wales, never mind South America by that date. The Welsh FA was only founded that same year, and even then the new game was being played a very small part of the Principality, although admittedly it was the mining area around Wrexham . And the second is that the game was a long way from even jogging the imaginations of the French, Germans and Italians, so their knowledge of it would have been zero. And thirdly, the question has to be asked, what kind of football was it, rugby, which is at least said to have arrived specifically in South Wales in 1850, the one that interests us, association, or a hybrid?
But that is not all. There is a fourth problem. No further mention of Mr. Simpson can be found as yet. There is no record of him travelling either from and to Venezuela and furthermore clearly the game, whatever it was, did not stick. Quite simply there is no concrete mention of football with a caveat for a quarter century, that is until 1902 in the country's capital, Caracas when and where at the beginning of August the San Bernardino football club, the first in the city, indeed in the country, was founded. The caveat is that a decade before that, with investigation still at an early stage, it is thought two brothers, some say cousins, both engineers arrived to maintain the locomotives used on the British-owned Caracas to La Guaira railway. The line itself ran the twenty or so miles from the inland city to the nearest port. Construction had begun in 1881. It opened in 1883. And the brothers cum cousins name was Ballantyne, David and Jimmy, said to be Scots and with Jimmy having played football for no less than Arsenal.
The Arsenal connection is not impossible. The date of arrival of the Ballantynes in Caracas was sometime not earlier than 1890, not later than 1902, and probably nearer the latter date than the former. Moreover, Arsenal had been founded in 1886, notably by the Fifer,
David Danskin, also an engineer, and with several other Scots involved, all working at the ordnance factory in Woolwich. It then became the first professional, London club in 1891 and a Football League member in 1893, still with a regular and growing turnover of Scots in its playing ranks. In 1891 there were already at least twelve. In 1900 that had grown to thirteen. However, as yet amongst them there is no traceable record of a Ballantyne or the like, notably Ballantine, at the club either in its formative years or, indeed, over the following decade. But further research has cast up an alternative scenario. On 3rd December 1898, so at more or less the right time for our Venezuelan story a Jim, so Jimmy Ballantyne, notably Ballantyne with a "y" and said to be a Scot, had in London made his debut against Thames Ironworks, the forerunner of
West Ham, at centre-half, Scottish, attacking centre-half, in the Southern League Division Two and for Fulham. It was the team's first season both in the league and as a professional club, which had prompted a number of its amateur players to leave. Nor is it clear how many games Ballantyne played beyond the first but it is known from where he arrived at Craven Cottage. It was not directly from Scotland but from just across and down the river and on loan from Wandsworth, which Fulham knew, having played and defeated the fellow, London club the previous season in the London Senior Cup. And that leads to the certainty that Jimmy Ballantyne was first a player of recognised ability and second the possibility that in the context of Venezuela a confusion had arisen between "Wandsworth" and "Woolwich", with Arsenal playing in the then Kent suburb and known at that time as Woolwich Arsenal.
Davie and Jimmy Ballantyne were said on arrival to have first played football in their spare time in the railway yard at Caño Amarillo station, then on the northern edge of Caracas and the end of the La Guaira line, now a metro station not far from the city centre. Then they moved play to the nearby, coffee-growing San Bernardino Estate, hence the name of the new club. Today San Bernardino is built-on and absorbed, a suburb of the city, just to the north of its centre. And it was there on the estate that competitive games began between members of the Caracas's British community and other Europeans, with two of the other main players with San Bernardino the brothers, James and Robert Todd plus the Vollmer brothers. It was the Vollmers' father, who owned San Bernardino estate and was part of the significant German community, from which during the next decade emerged the Deutscher Sport Verein Caribbean; a decade which was to see the formation of a number of other clubs but also the folding in 1908 of the San Bernardino club itself, at which point the story becomes more complicated.
The problem is to find out who were the Ballantynes, and, indeed, the Todds. In fact the latter proved initially easier. Their father was also Robert and all three can be seen travelling; James, Jaime, to and from Venezuela to the United States and Puerto Rico from 1923 to 1953, a merchant, born in about 1879 so the right age to have been a young footballer in 1902, and the Robert Todds too, senior said to be born in England in 1851 so not Scots, junior in 1873 in their new home in South America, so again of footballing age in 1902 and also a merchant. And gradually a picture of the Ballantynes also emerged. There seems no doubt that they too where in Venezuela, for certain from 1906 until 1958, maybe before, perhaps later. Amongst the men four names feature, a David, a James, a Thomas and a William, of whom two are certainly engineers with the most revealing being the first, David.
In 1909 David Ballantyne sailed from La Guaria bound for New York and then from there onward to Liverpool. His date of birth is given as 1874 and the place definitively as Kilmarnock. And there was indeed a David Ballantyne, a David McAlpine Ballantyne, again specifically with a "y", born in 1874 in Kilmarnock, so twenty-six in 1902. His mother was Marion, nee McAlpine, and his father, Thomas. He was, moreover, one of twins, his twin brother also a Thomas and by 1881 they had been joined by a younger brother, aged just one, so born in 1879 and called James. Furthermore, in 1891, whilst James is still at school David, still living at home, was a boilermaker, a necessary skill for the railways plus in 1901, with now no mention of David, James is still specifically recorded as in Scotland but now in Glasgow, aged twenty-one and an engine fitter, whilst that same year a Ballantyne, no Christian name shown, travels exactly to Venezuela, where within months football kicks off.
Meanwhile David is nowhere to be seen, at least not in Scotland. So perhaps the story is as follows. Elder brother David found work in Venezuela in the 1890s. James followed on, still in his early twenties, in 1901 perhaps having in 1898 and aged eighteen flirted with professional football in London, where he had an uncle with his own family, and then returned to Scotland. In fact it seems David, Thomas and James's parents had even been married in London and their two elder sisters and a brother born there. And it also seems that in Venezuela a without doubt footballing David at least found a new life, certainly from 1908, and stayed. In his personal life he seems to have married in Caracas. His wife was Teresa Lemoine and they had at least three children; James, known as Jimmy, no doubt named after his uncle, born in 1908, baptised in 1910, Lilian Teresa baptised in 1908 so perhaps born in 1907 and Ana Teresa baptised in 1910, and named for their mother. Moreover, at the baptisms of the two Teresa's the father's name is even given as David McAlpine Ballantyne so there is little doubt that he was our man from Kilmarnock. Furthermore, In footballing terms he is also recorded as refereeing games for teams that were not founded until 1915, 1918 and 1923 respectively with the first, Central Atletico, still playing in Venezuela's top league today. And we even have a photograph of him taken in his now homeland.
As for James Senior himself there is no further trace. As the younger brother he might have had fewer ties and moved on after the normal four year contract. To where there is no indication but with his brother settled in Caracas but already by 1908 into his thirties and married or marrying the departure of the younger brother at about that time might explain the early demise that same year of the San Bernardino football club. With probably its best player gone and it second-best moving on in life it might indicate why its remaining members turned to horse-racing instead. Indeed, from then it would be a few years until the real re-emergence of the amateur game, professional football coming to the country only in the 1950s, at first within the European community but steadily expanding to all parts of Venezuelan society, with which would come a need for trusted officiating. And who could be more suitable than David Ballantyne himself, now in his mid-forties but steeped in the game.
Which leaves one small unanswered Ballantyne question. There is one more girl of that name born at about the same time as Davids' two and also in Venezuela in about 1909. Her Christian name is Ethel, not a Scot's name by any stretch but, whether he moved on or in fact stayed, might she have been Jimmy's girl?