Thomas Burns (New Zealand)

Thomas Burns ( born April 10, 1796 in Mossgiel, Ayrshire, Scotland, † January 23, 1871 in Dunedin, New Zealand) was a minister, colonialist in Otago and co-founder of Dunedin.

Life

Thomas Burns was the third son of Gilbert Burns (1760-1827), farmer, real estate brokers and brother of the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796), and Jean Breckenridge, daughter of a farmer from Kilmarnock, was born. Thomas grew up in a large family with eleven children. The grandmother, a sister and a niece of his father filled the house on to sixteen people.

Thomas attended the Haddington Grammar School. His teacher Edward Irving took him one day in the 35 km distant Edinburgh to hear one of the most famous speeches of Thomas Chalmers, mathematician and founder of the Free Church of Scotland. 1812, he was just 16 years old, he began to study at the University of Edinburgh in theology.

Scotland

1823 Burns was approved by the presbytery in Haddington to the pastorate, and finally ordained on 13 April 1826 in Ballantrae parish priest. On January 4, 1830 he married Clementina Grant, daughter of the Reverend James Francis Grant, Episkopalpfarrer in Edinburgh. In the same year he became pastor in Monkton, Ayrshire. With £ 400 annual salary he was there one of the highest paid pastor of the rural communities of Scotland. There in 1834, the neo-Gothic Monkton and Prestwick Parish Church was built in his tenure and in 1837 completed.

When in May 1843 turned away under the leadership of Thomas Chalmers 451 1203 pastor of the Church of Scotland and crossed over to the newly formed Free Church of Scotland, Thomas Burns was one of them and with his 47 years one of the oldest and most experienced pastor. He remained for 18 months in his community. From 1845 to 1847 he worked in different communities of Scotland.

During this time, Burns was interested more for the Otago settlement project of its church and came into contact with George Rennie (1802-1860), sculptor and politician, and William Cargill (1784-1860), at the time the database manager. Together with William Cargill, he was chosen by the Free Church of Scotland, co-chair the settlement project as a pastor and chaplain.

New Zealand

With 239 settlers on board, he sailed on 27 November 1847 the Philip Laing in the direction of New Zealand. Cargill was already started on 24 November with the John Wickliffe. Burns reached on 15 April 1848 all emigrants intact Port Chalmers and, together with Cargill settlement New Edinburgh, a short time later renamed in Dunedin.

Thomas Burns was in the next five years a tireless "worker". He used his expertise in agriculture, made ​​detailed weather records, assessed the quality of the timber and the soil and worked very closely with Cargill to meet the social, economic and political challenges of the settlement project. He never forgot his pastoral task. After he had received in 1854 by two other pastors support, he set to work to found the Presbyterian Church of Otago, which then in June 1854 constituted and its undisputed head he was up to his death.

How Cargill, the Burns had great influence, Burns was devoid of humor, patriarchal, stiff and dry in its own way and sometimes rigid in its action. He supported Cargill, the first free and them to critical newspaper Otago news put an end to. After all, he was more Democrat than it was Cargill. Burns was an advocate for education. He supported the establishment of the Otago Boys 'High School ( 1863) and the Otago Girls' High School ( 1870) and was the first Chancellor of the University of Otago.

In 1861 he was honored by the University of Edinburgh with an honorary doctorate in theology. The completion of its new church, the First Church of Otago, built by Robert Lawson, Burns did not live. He died suddenly on January 23, 1871 in his home in London Street, Dunedin.