One bet each way - Tony and Clare Rufo

Over the past decade, Hamilton residents Tony (Antonio) and Clare Rufo have travelled regularly to San Donato Val di Comino, Tony’s ancestral home town in Italy. Accompanied by family and friends, they fill a dozen rooms in a large B&B, and revel in the festival atmosphere that takes over each August. The population triples, as people make the journey home from far afield. Not just within Italy, but from places popular with emigrating San Donatese like Boston, New York, Toronto, and Ireland, for a month of parties and celebrations.

Knowing the Gow family of Fettercairn, Hamilton

There was no celebratory clinking of glasses of Scotch whisky when Fanny Gow, aged 42, gave birth to a boy in 1886, after 10 girls in succession. Temperance was the watchword of this prominent Hamilton family. Ramsay Gow, Fanny’s husband, was a foundation member of the Sons of Temperance, a member-only organization devoted to a life of abstinence from alcohol. Fanny herself was a great worker for the temperance cause, though her father was a publican.