LIKELY ORIGIN OF "SHARP" MIDDLE NAME

 6 Thread Street, Paisley (1917–1921) is where Annie Sharp Cumming lived prior tom emigration at the age of three. 

In 1921, 6 Thread Street was part of a bustling, stone tenement block built right in the industrial heart of Paisley's Seedhill district, with the street itself intersecting directly with the river. Your grandmother grew up here as the youngest of 11 children in a tight-knit tenement community, spending her earliest childhood playing right at the corner of this block.

Workers outside Anchor Mills in Paisley

### The Block Layout & Corner

While the building directly adjacent to No. 6 shared the exact block corner and intersection, there was no officially named municipal "Sharp Street" on that specific block at the time. Instead, property records from 1917 to 1921 reveal the following layout details:

* **The Corner Name:** The buildings sharing the exact corner of Thread Street where she lived were historically called **"Sharp's Buildings"** (or *Sharps Wynd* in older property records and historical references).

* **The Origin:** These tenements were named after the prominent local builder or landlord who originally erected that specific row of stone buildings.

Classic Scottish stone tenement block architecture.

### The Ground Floor "Wee Shops"

In classic Scottish stone tenement blocks like Sharp’s Buildings, the ground floor was almost exclusively reserved for small, hyper-local commercial businesses. Because my grandmother's tenement faced the colossal **Anchor Finishing Mill** and an old 1840s flour mill, these storefronts did a bustling business as "Penny Stores." They served daily essentials like milk, tobacco, tea, and loaves of bread to the thousands of mill workers who walked past every day for their shifts.

While the exact storefront next to No. 6 shifted hands over the years, local Paisley archival records, community logs, and resident recollections confirm that this stretch of Thread Street housed exactly three shops:

1. 1. **Arthur’s:** A small neighborhood grocery store widely known to local residents.
2. 2. **Tommy Cadden’s Shop:** A mid-street corner shop.
3. 3. **The Top-End Shop:** A small newsagent or sweet shop operating at the far top end of the street.