Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

David Gressick
Musselburgh
David Gressick (written as Griseck, Gressick, Grassick and Gressock) in the Old Parish Records and Statutory Registers was, at one time ballmaker to the Royal Perth Golfing Society. On the golf balls he made, there is no confusion, his name is written “Gressick”. According to Peter Baxter in Golf in Perth and Perthshire (1899), the establishment of the society in 1824 gave the impetus to restart club and ballmaking in the town (sorry, city, now) with John Jackson establishing his business. He suggests Gressock (his version of the name) started about the same time. Now, other than some fanciful ideas about the Romans in Perth, Baxter is usually pretty good especially on his sporting history but, unless I have missed something obvious, this cannot be. More believable is the Christie’s auction catalogue description of a John Sharp golf ball which states Sharp took over as Royal Perth’s ballmaker around 1858. (They use Gressock despite having sold a Gressick ball at auction a few years earlier.)

The other incongruity is that David Gressock seems to have been associated with Musselburgh all his days and no one with any variation of that name (bar a friendly society agent in 1871) appeared on the Perth census during his lifetime. That is quite believable. Several other club and ballmakers carried on their business elsewhere and had a branch in Perth because the North Inch was given over to ‘cow feeders’ in summer meaning a golfing season of only a couple of months. Andrew Forgan, Jamie Anderson, Walter McDonald and William Watt for Robert Simpson all had businesses in Perth though being associated with other places.

David Gressick (Griseck on the church record) was born in Inveresk (Musselburgh) in 1821 and baptised there on 13 February of that year, the son of William Griseck, a gardener, and his wife, Elizabeth Porteous.

He appears on all the Musselburgh censuses from 1841 to 1871 as a golf ball maker and a lodger in the house where he was staying (bar 1851 where his household status in Musselburgh is indeterminate). In 1841 he was staying with the Cosgroves, parents of Bob; in 1861 he was one of three ballmakers, including David Park lodging with Jemima Taylor..

Gressick never married but in 1870 he fathered a child. Elizabeth Grassick was born on 24 May to Maryann Kerr a domestic servant. On the 1871 census he is living at 37 High Street, Inveresk with Maryann but described as a boarder. In addition to Elizabeth there is a seven year old daughter of Maryann’s. Presumably the baby put paid to working as a domestic servant and she is now a millworker. Tragically, two months after this, David is dead, from ‘apoplexy’ on 24 July 1871.

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