And the knee-injury picked up as early as 1899 was to blight somewhat Bob's further footballing career, in 1904-5 at Dundee, and then at Motherwell, with Tom once more, and Hamilton before, at the age of thirty-one, a final two season but still in the top-flight, at Port Glasgow, again with Tom. By then, 1910, Bob had been married for the decade and with three boys. He had wed in 1902 to an Ayrshire girl with William born in Kilmarnock and John and Robert Jnr. in Dalziel, so The Well. 

However, with the family still living in Motherwell and Bob having failed in 1911 to get the managership of the town's club a decision was made to leave Scotland, he arriving in the USA in late 1913/early 1914. There he was soon joined by the rest of the family and ostensibly found work with Babcock and Wilcox at its American yard in Bayonne in New Jersey. However, B & W was establishing its sponsored "soccer" club at precisely that time with Bob brought in as its manager and with some success. As a team it would be prominent for seven seasons, even reaching the final of the American Cup in 1918, this while footballing and family links with the old country were still maintained. Young William Jnr. would begin his footballing career in 1921, but it was back in Scotland with two seasons in Glasgow at Third Lanark. Moreover, it appears by 1920 Tom might too have crossed the pond also to settle with his equally Scots-born family initially at least in Bayonne, working once more for B & W and likely to have been brought in to assist by his elder brother.  

Yet, whatever the cooperation, it was not to be very long term. In 1926, still in Bayonne and not quite fifty Bob passed away. He left a widow, Helen, who would survive him by forty-four years, they having been married in Kilmarnock in 1902. William would move to Georgia and die there but there other children would remain in the Bayonne area.