rn, on February 7th, 1873,
a son, named after his father, and described in the family record as
Thomas Andrews of Dunallan. His eldest brother, John Miller, born in
1871, and his youngest brother, William, born in 1886, are now Managing
Directors of John Andrews & Co., Ltd., under the Chairmanship of their
father. A third brother, James, born in 1877, adopted the profession of
his distinguished uncle, and is now a barrister-at-law. His only sister,
Eliza Montgomery, married in 1906, Lawrence Arthur, the third son of
Jesse Hind, Esq., J.P., of Edwalton, Notts, and a solicitor of the
Supreme Court.

[Illustration: ARDARA, COMBER]

Tom was, we are told, "a healthy, energetic, bonny child, and grew
into a handsome, plucky and lovable boy." His home training was of the
wisest, and of a kind, one thinks, not commonly given to Ulster boys in
those more austere times of his youth. "No one," writes his brother
John, "knew better than Tom how much he owed to that healthy home life
in which we were brought up. We were never otherwise treated than with
more than kindness and devotion, and we learned the difference between
right and wrong rather by example than by precept." To Tom, his father,
then and always, was as an elder brother, full of understanding and
sympathy; nor did his mother, even to the end, seem to him other than a
sister whose life was as his own. He and his elder brother, John, were
inseparable comrades, there among the fields of Comber and in their
beautiful home, with its old lawn and gardens, its avenue winding past
banks of rhododendrons, the farm behind, outside the great mill humming
busily, and in front the gleam of Strangford Lough. Both father and
mother being advocates of temperance, encouraged their lads to abstain
from tobacco and strong drink; and to this end their good mother offered
to give a tempting prize to such of her sons as could on their
twenty-first birthday say they had so abstained. Tom, and each of his
brothers, not only claimed his prize but continued throughout life to
act upon the principles it signalised. Doubtless at times, being human
boys, they fell into mischief: but only once, their father states, was
bodily punishment given to either, and then, as fate willed it, he boxed
the ear of the wrong boy!

Quite early, young Tom, like many another lad, developed a fondness for
boats, and because of his manifest skill in the making of these he
gained among his friends the nickname of "