On June 1st 1841 the Scottish poet and songwriter Robert Allan died in New York.
Robert Allan was a friend and companion of Robert Tannahill, the weaver poet and was born at Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire. Inheriting a taste for music, h was spurred on by the encouragement of the Tannahill. Like Tannahill, his occupation was that of a weaver many of his best songs were composed at the loom. A number of them he contributed to the Scottish Minstrel, published by R. A. Smith. Several of Allan’s songs also appeared in the Harp of Renfrewshire.
In his forties Robert Allan was an active Radical and played a significant part in political meetings and demonstrations. He presided over an important Radical meeting in the Relief Church and with other Kilbarchan weavers played a prominent part in the Radical demonstrations in Paisley in 1819 and 1820.
Allan felt unappreciated in Scotland so took the bold move to emigrate to America in his mid sixties, with his son Robert in 1841, but six days after his arrival in America he unfortunately died of a chill caught at sea.
In Kilbarchan at the bottom of Church Street near the spot where his house once stood, a commemorative well was erected to his memory by Kilbarchan General Society in 1935. He is the only Kilbarchan weaver to have a commemorative monument in the village.
