Skip to main content

2024 Week 13: Worship #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

Over the course of my many years of research, I have come across a few direct ancestors whose life was not only shaped by their religious beliefs but who actually ministered to those beliefs. 

My 7 x great grandfather, John Bradfute, was born in 1639. He graduated with an M.A. from the University of Edinburgh in 1658 and, at some point after that, decided he wanted to become a minister in the Church of Scotland.  He was ordained as the minister at Pettinain, a small parish in present day South Lanarkshire in 1689. On the Scotland's Churches Trust website, the church is described as " a fine example of a rural parish church with outstanding views over open countryside". That might not have changed since John delivered his sermons there.  The original church had been established in the 12th century and the present day church dates from the late 17th century. 

Pettinain Church   Source:https://canmore.org.uk/site/47649/pettinain-church

John died in 1709 and his son James, my 6 x great grandfather followed in his father's footsteps,  ministering at Dunsyre, (also in present day South Lanarkshire) in 1713. His marriage record, four years later to Jean Mure, describes him as 'Minister of the Gospel'. His church at Dunsyre is no longer the original one, it having been restored and rebuilt in the early 1800s.

The family tradition of entering the church continued down another generation, when James' son,  John also entered the ministry, and also preached in the Dunsyre Kirk.

These three were typical rural ministers. Another minister in my family tree, but much further back is the Reverend Hans Hamilton, my 10 x great grandfather on a different line. Whereas the Bradfute family ministers seem to have led a low key small parish life, Hans Hamilton was quite different. Son of Archibald Hamilton of Raploch,  Hans Hamilton was the first Protestant minister of Dunlop in Ayrshire. He ministered there from 1583 until 1606. He and his wife, Janet Denham were married for 45 years and had six sons and one daughter. The eldest of his sons, James Hamilton, became the 1st Viscount of Claneboye and was a founding member of the Protestant Church in northern Ireland. He had been chosen by King James VI of Scotland, I of England to lead the plantation of the Scots into Ulster. If you want to know more you can read about him here:

James Hamilton erected a tomb to his father, my 10 x great grandfather Hans, in Dunlop graveyard in 1641. It is still there, complete with stone sarcophagus and marble statues of Hans and his wife, Janet,  having been restored with funding from many sources including Historic Environment Scotland, as well as the Clan Hamilton Society in the USA. 
 
The Hans Hamilton tomb in Dunlop.



.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 50: You wouldn't believe it! #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

I have already written about my 3 x great uncle, James McAra, who was sentenced to deportation at the High Court in Edinburgh in 1811. His crime had been to attack his brother, my 3 x great grandfather, Alexander, with an iron bar during an argument, with Alexander being badly hurt and dying a few days later. James was an iron worker by trade in Scotland and continued this trade in the small town of Sorell in Tasmania.  We cannot know much about the life he led in Sorell, but he is mentioned in a variety of documents. For example we know he was given a Free Pardon by the Governor of Tasmania and New South Wales in 1836. He also acquired some land in 1839, which, in his Will, he left to daughters of a friend. We know his affection for 'drink', which had led to the fatal fight back in Scotland, never left him as 'excessive drinking' was given as cause of death on his death certificate. However his tombstone bears witness to the fact he was well-liked and a 'good and h
2 comments
Read more

2024 Week 14: Favourite recipe #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

So, despite the heading, I'm not going to write about a favourite recipe that an ancestor has passed down to me, simply because there isn't one. What or rather whom I'm going to write about is my mum, Helen Anderson, who absolutely loved baking. And it is this love of baking that has been passed on to me. My mum. My mum was always baking. Like most children, I got allowed to 'lick the spoon' and taste the raw cake mixture. I got to learn to how to make crispie cakes. I watched how to make pancakes and enjoyed getting the first ones off the pan. I took in helpful baking hints like 'half fat to flour' for pastry or ' 4 4 4 plus 2' for the measurements of flour, sugar,  butter and eggs needed for a sponge cake or little butterfly cakes.  She had learned how to bake from her mother, as many women in her generation had done. There was always something 'in the tin' should a friend or neighbour pop in for a cup of tea. But she didn't just bake f
Post a Comment
Read more

2024 Week 43: Lost contact #52Ancestorsin52Weeks

 When we research our ancestors and their families, it is all to easy to become a collector of names, dates and places. After all, we want to 'know' who they were and where they lived and when, in order to get a glimpse into what their life was like. We look for photographs of our most recent ancestors to see what they looked like. We trawl censuses, Poor Law Applications, Wills and Testaments to get some detail about their rank in society, their jobs, their financial circumstances. We discover their families, the children they had, the children they lost. We may read their obituaries and gravestones and scan their death certificates for cause of death. Through research, we can slowly start to build up a picture of them, a notion that we know 'who they were'. But something will usually elude us - we will never truly know their feelings/emotions, even if we know the key moments in their lives. Take my grandmother, Christina, who lost her first four children and then anot
4 comments
Read more