Renton
RENTON, a manufacturing town of Dumbartonshire, Scotland. Pop. (1901) 5067. It is situated on the Leven, 2 m. N.N.W. of Dumbarton by the North British and Caledonian railways. The leading industry is Turkey red dyeing, and calico-printing and bleaching are also carried on. A parish church stands on the site of Dalquhurn House, the birthplace of Tobias Smollett the novelist, to whose memory a- Tuscan column was erected in 1774, the inscription for which was revised by Dr Johnson when he visited Bonhill in that year with Boswell. The town was founded in ^782 by Mrs Smollett previously Mrs Telfer of Bonhill (sister of Tobias Smollett), who resumed her maiden name when she succeeded to the Smollett estates; it was named after Cecilia Renton, daughter of John Renton of Blackadder, who had married Mrs Smollett's son, Alexander Telfer.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
