John Glennie of Maryculter
- Details
- Published on Saturday, 03 March 2012 16:50
- Written by Heritage Trust
by Malcolm Glennie Holmes, Wagga Wagga, Australia
We visited Maryculter in July last year and found and photographed John Glennie's grave in the kirkyard of St Mary's. His son, also Rev John (1765 -1817), minister of Dunnottar, is buried in the same grave, with his memorial stone vertically placed at the head of the grave. (John jnr's wife, Harriet Cook, is buried in St Andrews), Three of John Glennie's sons became ministers, his son William (my ancestor) had 13 children (12boys, 1 girl) and four of them became ministers! There is an unbroken line of 6 generations of ministers from John, with the 7th generation all girls, one of whom became a nun!
We didn't swim the Dee to Peterculter but drove straight to Aberdeen afterwards as a haar was coming in and we didn't think we could find our hotel in it.
We have Norman Douglas Nicol's monograph on Maryculter in the 18th century (bought from the ANEHFS), where he states that John Glennie is (possibly) the son of a John Glenny, farmer of Tillieskeith, mentioned as a witness to a baptism in 1703. However, Marianne Glennie (1845-1921), John's great grand daughter and my great grand mother, gives the following in a memo she wrote about 1870.
"As far as we know, the Glennie Family dates back to about 1650 when Alexander Glennie, who came from the South, settled in the parish of Mary Coulter. His son John was married in 1713 to Grissel Dalgarno, whose son John born 1720 married Jean Mitchell in 1754; these were the great-grandparents of my (Marianne Holmes, nee Glennie) generation. This John Glennie was Minister of Drumoake, and afterwards of Mary Coulter, where he had an Academy for education of the sons of the leading families round. The first two mentioned, Alexander & John, had lived on a farm called White Shaw (actually Wetshaw) and died there in the parish of Mary Coulter."
She also quotes her uncle, Rev John David Glennie (1797-1874) as saying that:
The Glennies of Glen (wherever that may be) after a roving life in the South, settled in Deeside in the North Borders of the county of Kincardine, in the neighbourhood of the monastery called the "House of Blairs" to which they in process of time transferred land, the deed of transfer of which exhibits their seal with coat of arms about the middle of the last century.
The Revd John Glennie D.D. of Marischal College, Aberdeen, who was Minister of Maryculter on Deeside and previously of an adjoining parish of Drumoak, was a learned man & eloquent preacher & was competitor with Dr George Campbell for the Professor's Chair of Divinity at Aberdeen; he educated a number of sons of the leading families on Deeside, Duffs of Fetteresso and others. His youngest son George Glennie D.D. succeeded Dr Beattie {whose niece he had married} as Professor of Moral Philosophy in Aberdeen.
In discussion with Norman Douglas Nicol, he says this information about the house of Blairs is rubbish.