George Paxton (minister)

Rev Prof George Paxton DD (1762 -1837) was a Scottish secession minister and poet. He was Professor Divinity at Edinburgh University.

Life

Paxton's Secessionist Church, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh

The grave of Rev George Paxton, St Cuthberts Churchyard, Edinburgh

He was born on 2 April 1762 at Dalgourie, on the edge of Bolton, East Lothian. He was the eldest son of William Paxton a joiner and carpenter, and his wife, Jean Milne. In early childhood the family moved to Melrose, then again to Makerstoun, near Kelso. Here a local laird, Sir Hay McDougal, a colonel in the Scots Greys, took George under his wing, and sent him to Kelso to learn Latin and Greek. After an unfinished apprenticeship as a carpenter, he left his home town to go to Edinburgh University but left with no degree in 1784, and instead continued under the private tutelage of Rev William Moncrieff in Alloa. Here he became “a firm seceder”.^[1]

In March 1788 he received his licence to preach and was ordained as minister of the joint parishes of Kilmaurs and Stewarton in August 1789, choosing to live in the latter village. Owing to ill-health, around 1800, he was forced to abandon this job, and he took a 7-year respite. However the synod thereafter appointed him as Professor of Divinity. In 1820 he fell out with Rev Thomas McCrie and was forced to resign his professorship. He then set up his own independent secession church, in an old chapel on the steep steps of the Vennel in a hidden location off the Grassmarket in Edinburgh.

In 1822 they commissioned Thomas Brown to build a new church on Infirmary Street, just off South Bridge.^[2] Together with a split-off group from Rev McCrie they formed the Associate Synod of Original Seceders. He then was invited to resume his professorship acting for this new body. In 1828 he is shown as a member of the Edinburgh Bible Society under the leadership of Lord Glenorchy.^[3]

In the 1830s he is listed as living at 12 Archibald Place, off Lauriston Place, near to George Heriot’s School on the south side of Edinburgh.^[4]

He died in Edinburgh on the 9 April 1837 and is buried in the “West Kirk” burial ground, generally now known as St Cuthbert’s Churchyard. The tall monument is eroding and the lower text is lost... it stands against the south wall.

Family

Paxton married Elizabeth Armstrong of Kelso in 1790. Their marriage was cut short by her death in 1800. They had two sons and three daughters.

His daughter, Jean, married the Rev John More of Cairneyhill in Fife.^[5]

His son, George, became a doctor and rose to fame in India.

Paxton married a second time, to Margaret Johnstone, daughter of a Berwick farmer.

Publications

• An Inquiry into the Obligation of Religious Covenants upon Posterity (1801)
• Healing the Divisions in our Church (1802)
• The Villager and other Poems (1813)
• Illustrations of the Holy Scriptures 3 vols (1822)^[6]

References