John Marr ran a watchmakers’s shop in the High Street of Falkirk from around 1847 and in 1853 took his brother Alexander into partnership. In 1872 they moved along the road to Number 29 High Street. The two brothers were natives of the town and presumably served their apprenticeships there.
Alexander Marr was killed in July 1875 at Queen Street Station in Glasgow when he alighted from a train before it had come to a full stop and was trapped between the carriage and the platform. By coincidence John also died on a train on 22 August 1888. By then he had sold the business, in 1877, to Gavin Hamilton.
1975-13-1 – White dial “J & A MARR FALKIRK”. The arch shows a courting scene with a romancing couple standing in front of a stone garden bench set in a clearing of a woodland park. Figures in the background watch on. The scene is captioned “The May QUEEN” and the woman, clad in a gold top and green plaid, is depicted in the four seasons which fill the spandrels below. In three of these she is wearing a bonnet with a large plume. “Spring” – sees her holding a rose with more flowers set in a garden urn; “Summer” has her holding a long-handled rake with the top of a ladder and hayrick beside her; during the “Winter” she warms herself in front of a coal fire in a wood panelled room; the bottom of the hayrick appears in “Autumn” when she holds a sickle.
Falkirk Local History Society 