John Burns (minister)

Rev Dr John Burns (13 February 1744 – 26 February 1839) was a Church of Scotland minister, who served a Glasgow cure longer than any minister on record, in the Barony Church for sixty-nine years.[1][2]

Burns was born in Stirling, Scotland,[3] the son of John Burns of Stirth, a schoolmaster, and his wife Janet Young of Risk.[4][5] He was educated at the University of Glasgow, and first appointed to the Barony in 1770, as assistant to Lawrence Hill. He was ordained on 26 May 1774,[4] and thereafter was sixty-five years as minister himself.[1] He became a Doctor of Divinity (DD) from the University of Aberdeen in 1808.[4]

Burns was an ally of the Anti-Slavery Society and the Bible Society.[1] Although Robert Raikes is usually credited with establishing the first Sunday school in the early 1780s, Burns opened a "Sabbath Night School" in Calton in 1774 or 1775.[6]

He married Elizabeth Stevenson, daughter of John Stevenson, brewer in Glasgow. Among Burns's nine children, John Burns (1775–1850) became Regius Professor of Surgery at the University of Glasgow, Allan Burns (1781–1813) was a physician to the Imperial Court of Russia, James Burns (1789–1871) was a shipowner and George Burns (1795–1890) was his partner in G & J Burns.

A portrait by John Graham-Gilbert, painted in 1830, is in the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Glasgow.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c John Guthrie Smith and John Oswald Mitchell, The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry (2nd edition). Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons, 1878 : LXXXV. Rosebank, via Glasgow Digital Library
  2. ^ Hodder (1890), pp. 185-6
  3. ^ Hodder (1890), p. 22
  4. ^ a b c Hew Scott, Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae, Volume III Synods of Glasgow & Ayr. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1920. p.394 : John Burns
  5. ^ Hodder (1890), pp. 15-16
  6. ^ Keddie, W. (9 July 2016). "The Sabbath school magazine,". The Sabbath school magazine. 31–32.
  7. ^ GLAHA:44172, University of Glasgow Collections. The Hunterian also owns a number of mezzotint prints of the portrait, by engraver William Ward
    Reverend John Burns (1744–1839), Minister of the Barony Church, Glasgow (1774–1839), Art UK
    Photograph by Thomas Annan of the portrait, Mitchell Library GC 920.041435 COR; via Glasgow's Story


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