John was the third son (born 1854) of Garrett and Ann Clearwater. In 1877, as his father and brothers were deciding to move south after the death of his mother, Ann (1875), he leased a ten-acre block from the family farm underneath where Larnach’s Castle would eventually be. It was unworked land, so it meant a lot of hard work, but like his father and siblings, he was a big, powerful man. The others went south, he cleared the land and began a farm. He married Sarah Gwyn in 1880, and they eventually had eight children. Progressively they added to the farm, and developed a well-known dairy herd. As they aged, the farm became too much hard work, so they moved down to a smaller holding at the top of Clearwater Street. Sarah died in 1936, John two years later. Their daughter Elizabeth ran a small shop on Portobello Road, living behind it (died 1946), and another daughter, May, worked the farm until it all became too much, dying in 1970. Both are buried in the Cemetery.
John Clearwater haymaking at the top of James/Clearwater St. Below the Clearwater Farmhouse(now rebuilt as the Whitehouse).