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Private William Maxted Coltart

 

 

William (Bill) Maxted Coltart was the son of James and Sara Coltart of Scotland.  He was a golf professional at Belfast's Cliftonville Golf Club when he enlisted in the North Irish Horse at Belfast on 1 June 1917 (Service No.71851). He was aged 32 at the time. (At the age of 19 he had won the Assistant Professional's Championship of England and repeated the feat the following year. He was also the first golf professional of the Portstewart Golf Club.)

He embarked for Le Havre on 31 March 1918 and from there was sent to join a unit of the 6th Dragoon Guards in the field. On 6 November 1918 he contracted influenza on while on patrol duty at Cantaing, near Cambrai, and was transferred to a hospital at Camiers, near Etaples then to a hospital in Manchester. By the new year he had recovered and in 14 February 1919 he was discharged to Class Z Army Reserve. 

Coltart was commissioned to go to the United States around 1919 to open a golf course and be the golf professional there. Upon arriving he assumed the professional's job at the Brookline Square Club. He was at the Delaware Club for five years and left to become the professional at the Spring Mill Course of the Philadelphia Country Club. Later, Bill was named the first golf professional at the Valley Forge Golf Club when it was opened to the public in 1928. In 1932 he resigned from Valley Forge to become the golf pro at the Ocean City Maryland Golf Club and later the Green Hill Country Club in Salisbury, Maryland. His return later to Valley Forge was welcomed by the Plymouth Country Club.

The Coltarts resided in King of Prussia, PA during this period. Bill died on 19 November 1946. He had two sons, both golf professionals, Sidney and Dennis.

 

I am grateful to Dennis Coltart, Bill's grandson, for agreeing that I reproduce this image.