Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

Thomas Harrower
Carnoustie
Thomas Harrower seems to have been involved in clubmaking for only one year. He did though, create a patented design of lasting significance.

The son of another Thomas Harrower, a hairdresser, and his wife, Isabella Tait, Thomas Henderson Harrower was born in Greenock on the Firth of Clyde on 26 February 1880. He is still at home with his parents and two younger brothers at the time of the 1901 census and is described as an apprentice joiner.

In 1907 he emigrated to the United States aboard the Astoria arriving in New York from Glasgow on 20 May. He carried on his trade as a joiner (carpenter) and on the 1910 census is living in Belleville, New Jersey, with his wife Margaret Whiteford, another Scottish immigrant, the couple having married the previous year.

He successfully applied for a British patent in 1911 (4326/11), for a method of joining the shaft to the head via a threaded steel core in the hosel. This meant the hosel could be extremely short, 1,75” in the case of a putter, and the weight saved could then be put into the head, directly behind the point of contact with the ball.

I am assuming he returned to Scotland to put this into production and took over the cleek-making firm of J & R Crighton, in 1912 and continued to use their heart symbol as his cleek mark. As yet, I have found no immigration record of his return to the United States so it is possible this was all done remotely. There are very few clubs made with this cleek mark and his name stamp as the plant was in turn taken over by Cochranes, in 1913 to act purely as a manufacturer of iron heads for their clubs.

Harrower made his declaration for naturalisation as a US citizen and signed it in Newark in June 1917. Two months later he is back with officialdom with his draft card. He has had a stroke with the result that his right side is paralysed and he can no longer sign his own name. The family, now with three sons, continued to live in New Jersey and appear on both the 1920 and 1930 censuses for Newark.

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