Robert Elder (minister)
Scottish minister (1808–1892)
Robert Elder (1808–1892) was a Scottish minister of the Free Church of Scotland who served as Moderator of the General Assembly to the Free Church 1871/72.
Life
He was born in Inverary on 28 July 1808, the son of John Elder, Comptroller of Customs, and his wife, Euphemia Beith. The family moved to Campbeltown while he was young and he was educated at Campbeltown Grammar School.
He studied divinity at Glasgow University graduating MA in 1825 and was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Kintyre in November 1829.
He was ordained by the Church of Scotland at Kilbrandon in March 1831, in succession to Alexander Beith. He was translated to Killin in 1834, and in 1838 to St Paul's Church, Edinburgh.
He left the established church in the Disruption of 1843 creating Free St Paul's Church in Edinburgh and moved to the Free West Church in Rothesay on the isle of Bute in 1847. In 1871 he succeeded the Rev John Wilson as Moderator of the General Assembly, the highest position in the Free Church. He was succeeded in turn in 1872 by Rev Charles John Brown.
Glasgow University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity in 1871.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Elder (minister)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.