John Hamilton Gillespie

John Hamilton ('Ham') Gillespie of the Royal Company of Archers, the sovereign's bodyguard in Scotland.

Gillespie was born at Moffat in Dumfriesshire in 1852, the son of Sir John Gillespie, head of the Florida Mortgage and Investment Company. He studied law in Edinburgh but in 1886 was sent out to Florida to manage his father's concerns. He built the DeSoto, the first hotel in Sarasota, and laid out a golf course there, one of the first in the United States. He served as Mayor of Sarasota six times. He died on 7 September 1923 of a heart-attack, while playing golf on the course he had built.

Photographed by John Moffat of 125 Princes Street, Edinburgh.