William "Billy" Dickson is a quandary.  On Wikipedia he is given as born in 1866 in Crail in Fife. The inestimable Andy Mitchell has him also born that year but in Perth-shire and as is normally the case it looks like he is right. Billy was in fact born a McFarlane, the second illegitimate son of Isabella, a Flax Winder, and in Rattray on the Perthshire-Angus border. He only became a Dickson when in 1871 his mother married in Coupar Angus a railway-worker, John Dickson, had two children with him and between them moved to Dundee. Thus it was that Billy learned the game there and began, originally a boiler-maker to trade, his football career at twenty, a forward, with Strathmore and a single cap before in 1888 Sunderland came calling.