Tag: phd student

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Visitor Vignettes: A Botanical Love Story

The Library of Innerpeffray, a one-stop shop for all your reading and visitor attraction needs! And, potentially… romantic connections?

In last year’s exhibition, we focused on historical visitors to the library and where and when they had travelled from. One of our featured visitors, Alexander Thom junior, visited the library three times, and on his visit of the 23rd July 1879, he was accompanied by nine other individuals, whose signatures were all entered under the initialism of C.B.F.C. These members were: Mary Dee Wells, Caroline McLaren, Margaret H. Pagan, Jane C. Campbell, Miss Gibson, F. D. Ferguson, J. Wemyss Stewart, and Dr. Alexander Thom, from Crieff; Mrs A. D. Macnair, from Allarton, Partick; and Mrs Alexander Scott, from Kirkcowan, Dumfries and Galloway.

Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.43r, 23rd July 1879

A complete mystery for many years of my research, as none of the members elaborated on the meaning of C.B.F.C., it was a very exciting moment when I finally discovered what it signified. While researching Alexander Thom in local newspapers, I came across an article in The Crieff Journal entitled ‘Crieff Botanical Field Club’.[1] Dated just a month after the club’s visit to Innerpeffray, the article lays out their latest “botanising expedition” to Glenturret and Ben Chonzie.

The Crieff Journal, 22nd August 1879, p.3: ‘Crieff Botanical Field Club’

Alexander Porteous, writer of a very informative chronicle of Crieff, tells us that “[i]n the summer of 1879, Dr Alexander Thom, junr., got a number of ladies and gentlemen interested in the pursuit of botany, and under his guidance a Botanical Club was formed. The members made several interesting excursions, chief among them being the ascents of Benchonzie and Ben Vorlich, on the slopes of which many interesting and rare plants were found.”[2]

In addition to Alexander Thom, several other members of the C.B.F.C. were also repeat visitors, who frequented the library on more than one occasion. Caroline, or Carrie, McLaren, for example, visited at least four times between 1872 and 1879, often accompanied by other members of her family.

Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.8v, 30th July 1862
Innerpeffray Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.18r, 25th June 1870

The particular focus of this blog is to highlight two additional repeat visitors: Fergus David Ferguson and Margaret Helen Pagan. Fergus David Ferguson, born in India in 1858, first visited the library at just three years old, accompanied by his uncle John and aunt Annie. He visited again, aged 11, once more with his uncle, and was able to sign the visitors’ book himself, in what is clearly a child’s handwriting, misspelling his home residence as ‘Culcatta’ rather than Calcutta (since 2001, Kolkata).[3]

Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.28v, 31st August 1874

Margaret Helen Pagan was born in 1859 in Durisdeer, Dumfries and Galloway, and first visited Innerpeffray, aged 15, in August 1874. In July 1879, the couple visited Innerpeffray together with the C.B.F.C., and two years later, they got married!

Reported in both the Dundee Courier and Stirling Reporter, the two were married by the Reverend John Cunningham (himself a borrower at Innerpeffray) in Crieff on the 27th April 1881. Ferguson’s address was listed at the time as 7 Seton Place, Edinburgh, and Pagan’s as Rockclyffe, Crieff. I have to hope that there were many fellow members of the Crieff Botanical Field Club at the ceremony!

‘Falkirk’, Linlithgowshire Gazette, 2nd January 1897, p.6

The newspaper article above, from the Linlithgow Gazette, gives more detail about Fergus David Ferguson in 1897 – his work as a bank agent, and an “enthusiastic volunteer” and member of the local corps, Falkirk Parish Church and Falkirk Lawn Tennis Club. By the 1901 census, the couple were living in Falkirk with their two sons, David and Allan, and three daughters, Jean, Christina, and Margaret.

Whether the two met while living in Crieff, or were brought together by Alexander Thom and the Crieff Botanical Field Club, it is wonderful to have evidence of them being in the same place at the same time before they were married. More ways in which the visitors’ books add to our knowledge of social history and people’s lives.

[1] ‘Crieff Botanical Field Club’, Crieff Journal, 22 August 1879, Friday Evening edition, p. 3.

[2] Alexander Porteous, The History of Crieff From the Earliest Times to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1912), pp. 378–79.

[3] Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.18r.

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Visitor Vignettes: The Reverend Hugh Aird

NLS Acc.13951(iii) Photograph of ‘Grandfather Hugh Aird, D.D., Brechin’

We started thinking about this year’s exhibition by considering who visited Innerpeffray 150 years ago, in 1874. With 181 visitors to the library that year, we could not focus on them all, and one interesting gentleman we did not manage to highlight in the main exhibition was the Reverend Hugh Aird, M.A., D.D. (1824-1895).

Innerpeffray Library Visitors’ Book Volume 1, f.28v

On Saturday 5th September 1874, ‘Hugh Aird, M.A.’ wrote his signature in the Innerpeffray visitors’ book, indicating that he had come from Brechin, Angus, perhaps accompanied by ‘William Stevenson, M.A.’, from Madras, India (what is now Chennai), who visited on the same date.[1]

Born in Glasgow in November 1824 and educated at Glasgow University, Aird was ordained by the United Presbyterian Church in Arbroath in January 1854 and received his doctorate from Glasgow in April 1889 (15 years after his visit to Innerpeffray). A much esteemed and respected member of the community, Aird preached at the City Road United Presbyterian Church in Brechin for forty years. He died after a brief illness, aged 70, in July 1895, and is buried in Brechin Cemetery.

NLS Acc.13951(ii), printed obituary entitled ‘In Memoriam. Rev. Hugh Aird, M.A., D.D.’

While doing some initial research into Hugh Aird in case we decided to feature him in the 2024 exhibition, I came across some related items held by the National Library of Scotland: a photograph, printed by Glasgow company MacLure, MacDonald & Co. taken at some point between 1889 and Aird’s death in 1895; a printed obituary, featuring an excerpt from The United Presbyterian Magazine, 2nd September 1895; and a handwritten hymnal filled with around 80 tunes of the United Presbyterian Church.[2]

The obituary is finely printed and tells much about the man and his legacy, in addition to details of his funeral, which was presided over by the Reverend R. C. Cameron of Cambridge Street United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow. Aird was a member of the Mechanics’ Institution, the Parochial Board, chairman of the Brechin Savings’ Bank and Burgh School Board, and a “popular speaker at temperance meetings and at the annual gatherings of Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations.” [3] What the obituary does not include, however, is any details on Aird’s involvement with music, which leads me to perhaps the most interesting item of this manuscript collection: Aird’s personal hymnbook.

NLS Acc.13951(i) Bookplate, ‘Hugh Aird 1839’
NLS Acc.13951(i) ‘Book of United Presbyterian hymn tunes of the Rev. Dr Hugh Aird’

This lovely little book features Aird’s bookplate on the inside front cover and almost 100 tunes for Presbyterian hymns, handwritten on hand-drawn staves, with an alphabetical contents page. The tunes are written with four-part harmonies and mostly titled with names of locations, such as Derby, Eastgate, Glasgow, Hamilton, New Portugal, and St. Lawrence. Other titles include Comfort, Creation, Invocation, Refuge and Tranquility [sic]. Almost all the tunes are followed by the initials C.M., L.M. or S.M., indicating each tune’s metre – either Common, Long, or Short Metre. The book seems to have been a work in progress, as Aird has started copying ‘Sicilian Hymn’ into the book but it is left unfinished, and it does not appear in the contents page.

NLS Acc.13951(i) ‘Book of United Presbyterian hymn tunes of the Rev. Dr Hugh Aird’

These may have been some of the most well-known or most popular tunes commonly sung in Aird’s locality, all gathered into one place as an easy reference for a choir, or, indeed, Aird himself.

The Psalmes of David in Metre, with Divers Notes, and Tunes Augmented to Them. (Middelburgh: Richard Schilders, 1594).

In the majority of cases, we do not know how historical visitors spent their time at Innerpeffray. Did they have a guided tour, much like visitors today? Were they able to peruse the collection and sit and read or examine books? Although we do not know for sure, we can guess at some books which might have been of interest to certain visitors. One such book which may have interested Hugh Aird is a sixteenth-century collection of psalms set to metre, “with Tunes augmented to them”.[4]

The Psalmes of David in Metre, with Divers Notes, and Tunes Augmented to Them. (Middelburgh: Richard Schilders, 1594).

Many of the tunes within are credited to Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins, whose arrangements of psalms set to metre had a wide readership and were frequently bound with copies of the Bible. It would be interesting to know if any of the tunes laid out in this book from 1594 were still in use in 1874, when Hugh Aird visited Innerpeffray. Perhaps Aird even transcribed some of these old tunes into his personal hymnal.

To learn more about other historical visitors to Innerpeffray and the books that they might have read, come along to the 2024 exhibition, Travelling Tales, which will be open until the end of October. This year’s Festival of Reading, A Way with Words, will be taking place from Thursday 5th to Sunday 8th September, with a wide range of workshops, talks and performances to celebrate books and reading. And if you would like to hear even more about Innerpeffray’s visitors’ books and my PhD research, I will be giving the FOIL Ted Powell Memorial lecture this year on 23rd October.

Isla Macfarlane, PhD Candidate

Footnotes:

[1]William Stevenson may have been a student of the Madras Christian College, which was originally founded by Church of Scotland missionaries. A nineteenth-century article about the Madras Christian College, in the magazine Harvest Field, is featured in this year’s exhibition.

[2] National Library of Scotland Archives and Manuscripts Division, ‘Book of United Presbyterian Hymn Tunes of the Rev. Dr Hugh Aird, Brechin, with Associated Material.’, NLS Archives and Manuscript Catalogue <https://manuscripts.nls.uk/repositories/2/resources/19078> [accessed 9 May 2023].

[3] ‘In Memoriam. Rev. Hugh Aird, M.A., D.D., Brechin’, 1895, NLS, Acc.13951(ii).

[4] The Psalmes of David in Metre, with Divers Notes, and Tunes Augmented to Them. (Middelburgh: Richard Schilders, 1594), The Library of Innerpeffray.