1. William Harley was a Scottish textile manufacturer and entrepreneur who is known for his early contributions to the city of Glasgow, including the development of the New Town of Blythswood, covering Blythswood Hill, and pioneering hygienic dairy farming.
William Harley trained as a weaver in Kinross under the employ of his maternal uncle who produced satinet, and then later for his uncle's business in Perth.
In 1789 William Harley moved to Glasgow, becoming a textile manufacturer, employing some 600 handloom weavers in partnership with a fellow member of the Merchants House but soon opened his own business warehouse on the corner of George Square on South Frederick Street, manufacturing turkey red gingham.
William Harley employed stonemason firms to build the first terraces of townhouses which were along the southside of Sauchiehall Street, and erected before 1815.
William Harley sold tracts of land, already serviced by him, to others for housebuilding.
William Harley used the arches on either side of the burn to store ice becoming the city's first ice merchant.
About 1804, at a time when people had to queue at wells within the city to pump water, William Harley started a business piping fresh water from springs on his Willowbank property west to a reservoir tank on the northeast corner of what is Bath Street and West Nile Street, and selling it twice a day directly to people's doors via water tanks on carts.
William Harley had cows at Willowbank and at his Sighthill farm of 36 acres just north of the new Royal Infirmary.
William Harley built a viewing gallery within his byres, charging admission from people wishing to view the milking.
William Harley continued to run his businesses as they struggled for a year or two thereafter, but then they were placed in a trust formed by some contemporaries in an attempt to keep them going.
John Galloway wrote a biography of William Harley which was published in 1901.
William Harley married Janet Laird, eldest daughter of John Laird, rope and sail manufacturer in Greenock, in 1801, and they had six daughters and four sons.