William Garden Blaikie ⁵⁴

  General Notes:

From The Times, June 12, 1899

The Rev. William Garden Blaikie, D.D., LL.D., late professor of
homiletics and pastoral theology in the Free Church New College,
Edinburgh, died yesterday morning at North Berwick, where for some
time past he had been suffering from severe illness. Born in 1820,
the son of Mr. James Blaikie, at one time Lord Provost of Aberdeen, he
was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and University, and graduated
M.A. after a promising career as a student at the age of 17 years. In
1842 he was ordained to the charge of Drumblade, but in 1843, when the
Disruption took place, he left the Church of Scotland, and finally
settled in a charge at Pilrig, Edinburgh, where for 24 years he
faithfully discharged the duties of a minister and busied himself with
the welfare of a large-working class population around his church,
delivering lectures to working men on which he afterwards based his
"Better Days for Working People", now in its 80th thousand, and
instituting many schemes of social reform. In 1868 he received his
professorship, which he held till 1897. In 1892, the year preceeding
the jubiliee of the Free Church, Professor Blaikie was fittingly
chosen as Moderator of the General Assembly, and from 1888 to 1892 he
acted as president of the Pan-Presbyterian Alliance. During his long
service in the Free Church he acted in many capacities. He was a
member of several committees, including the Continental, the
Temperance, the Church Extension, and the Home Missions Committees,
and he edited for a number of years the Free Church Magazine, the
North British Review, the Sunday Magazine, and the Catholic
Presbyterian. Among the best known of his works, of which there is a
long list, is his "Personal Life of David Livingstone." At a recent
University function at Aberdeen it was stated that Dr. Blaikie was the
oldest living graduate of the University.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Resided: 11 June 1899, 2 Tantallon Terrace, North Berwick, East Lothian. ¹³

2. He had an estate probated on 6 October 1899 in London. ¹³

William married Margaret Catherine Biggar on 20 May 1845.³⁷⁶ (Margaret Catherine Biggar died in 1915 ³⁷⁶.)