 The son of an Aberdeen merchant, he began work as a coppersmith and won a government contract to sheath ships' hulls in copper.With the fortune he made (equivalent to over $1 billion in today's terms), he purchased the estates of Callendar and Linlithgow near Falkirk, which had been forfeited by the Jacobite Earl of Linlithgow after the 1715 Jacobite rising.He bought the estates at auction and is said to have astounded bystanders by producing a banknote for £100,000, specially printed for the occasion, at the age of just 40.