Carnegie Comes Home
tormentor4555 / CC BY-SA 3.0
Andrew Carnegie left Dunfermline as a boy. Decades later, some of the fortune he made in America came back with him.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline in 1835 in a weaver's cottage that survives as part of the Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum. His family emigrated to the United States when he was a boy and began a new life in Pennsylvania. His rise through American industry made him enormously wealthy. Later he directed much of that fortune towards libraries, education, culture and other philanthropic projects in the United States, Scotland and elsewhere. Dunfermline became one of the places where his American success was turned back into civic life.
The modest scale of Carnegie's birthplace sits in striking contrast with the wealth and public legacy that followed. Beyond the museum, Dunfermline itself carries further traces of his giving. His return is written into the town as well as the collection.
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