Although not a regular in the side, Abe Hartley was at Dumbarton for the club’s finest hour: first-ever winners of the Scottish League and Cup runners-up in 1891; and champions again in 1892. After which, he soon left Scotland for the Football League. Converted from right-back to centre-forward by First Division Everton, he averaged only 10 League games a season in five years with them, although he did average a goal almost every other game and was ever-present in their 1897 FA Cup-run that culminated in a losing Final. After a few Division I games for Liverpool, he moved to Southampton in time to score on his Southern League debut in the first ever game at The Dell.  

He would roll a pre-match cigarette to be smoked at half-time. But instead of leaving it in the dressing room, he would play the first-half with it tucked behind his ear, seemingly oblivious to the possibility of its being dislodged.

At any rate, it did not stop him scoring a creditable 14 goals in 21 games as the Saints topped the Southern League for the third consecutive season. His season’s tally of 41 goals was a record until Derek Reeves bagged 48 in 1959-60. Whereupon, he left for a final season in the Football League: the first half with Second Division Arsenal; the latter half with Burnley, as they slid down from Division I. His footballing days now over, Abe returned, in 1900, to live in Southampton, where he found a job with the London and South Western Railway. Nine years later, aged only 37, he had a fatal heart attack outside the pay-office in Southampton Docks.

Abe Hartley was one of three brothers who played for Dumbarton. His older brother, Donald, remained in Scotland but Jimmy, the youngest of the three, played for half-a-dozen English clubs, most notably Lincoln City in the Football League’s Division II.