John Cowan

Sir John Cowan LLD DL (12 December 1844–7 February 1929) was a 19th/20th century Scottish iron and steel merchant.

Life

He was born on a ship going to Jamaica in the West Indies on 12 December 1844, the youngest of seven children and only son of Margaret Marshall (d.1886) and Rev John Cowan of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland church in Jamaica. He spent his early life in Jamaica. He was educated at the Edinburgh Institution then studied at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1860 he was apprenticed to the firm of Redpath Brown & Co, iron and steel merchants, of 33 Candlemaker Row and 137 Constitution Street in Leith. At that time he lived with his maternal uncle, James Marshall (d.1873), at 15 Regent Terrace on Calton Hill.

By the 1870s Cowan lived in a flat at 28 Nelson Street in Edinburgh's New Town.

From 1880 until death he was living at 6 Salisbury Road, a large Victorian villa in the Grange. In 1915 he was knighted by King Edward VII in his then role of Chairman of Redpath Brown. Another son was Andrew Wallace Cowan FRSA (1877–1964).