UF Fasti: Preface

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Lamb’s Fasti of the United Free Church

Preface to the Digital Edition

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Lamb’s Fasti was originally produced under the auspices of the Church of Scotland and this digital edition is published by kind permission of the Church of Scotland.

The book has long been out of print and this digital edition makes Lamb’s material more accessible to the student and researcher on a web-site which already contains similar material from other Scottish Presbyterian Churches.

In preparing this edition, the aim has been to present the material contained in Lamb’s Fasti in a clear and useful digital format; to provide cross-references and digital links where appropriate; to make corrections where required and to add details in certain cases where these are lacking. Developing these points brings out the way this digital edition differs in presentation from the book form.
 

Digital format

The digital format allows for a clearer presentation of the material. Space-saving contractions (for example, “ord.”, “ind.”, “trans.”, “CF”, “Jan.” and so on) are written out in full. There is no need to save space in a digital presentation and this change makes for smoother reading, especially for those not familiar with ecclesiastical terminology. This means that the list of abbreviations given in the book becomes redundant.

The name index is fuller and clearer. Full names, where known, are used instead of initials; and dates and places of ministry are supplied. Hence, for example, instead of:

Cairncross, T.S., 84, 269, 274

there is:

 

This means that we don’t italicise the entry which gives most information about each minister, as Lamb does: it is the latest one that generally gives such information, and all entries are dated so it easy to reach the one that gives the summary of a minister’s life.

The name index doesn’t give a page number as in the book but the name of the congregation. Clicking the link brings you to the minister’s congregation and you can easily scroll down from there. Where a minister did not occupy a particular pastoral charge, for example, professors or missionaries, the link takes you to the top of the page in which his name occurs and you may have to do more scrolling to reach his name.

At the top of each double page, Lamb supplies the name of the Presbytery that the text deals with. It was not practical to do precisely that in a digital version. Here, in smaller letters, below the name of every congregation (except the first one in each Presbytery), the name of the Presbytery is given. Similarly, (except for the first Presbytery in each Synod) the Synod name is given below the name of each Presbytery.
 

Cross references and links

Lamb gives copious references to Small’s two-volume History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church and to Ewing’s two-volume Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1900. In this digital edition links have been added to these references so that the source cited can be reached by a click.

Similarly links have been added where connections with other ministers are mentioned: for example, where the minister is the son or brother of a minister; or where a minister’s wife is the daughter or sister of a minister. Family links are thereby more easily followed up.

In each entry, Lamb gives the place a minister previously ministered (if any) and the place to which he moved (if any). In this edition, a link is given for these places where possible, thus making it easy to go through the different references to the one minister. Thus we have the entry of George Gray in Bonhill South:

 

Corrections

Minor errors have been corrected. Where these are obvious slips, the corrected form appears as the text. Otherwise the original text is given with the corrected version in [square] brackets. There has been, however, no systematic attempt to look for mistakes: the errors corrected came to light in the normal course of editing the material.
 

Additional material

Any additional material provided here is also given in [square] brackets. I made a consistent attempt to look for full names (where only initials were given); date and place of birth; names of parents; and date of death. However I did not dig deeply into these matters, when they were not immediately apparent, and there is room for more work to be done in this area.

Where I happened to come across other details in the course of looking for such information, they have also been included. Thus I have occasionally added University studies;marriage date and wife’s name; or place of burial where these happened to come to my attention.

As Lamb linked congregations and minister with their previous histories in the United Presbyterian and Free Churches, so I have tried to provide references to the Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, Volumes 9, 10 and 11 for the men who continued their ministries in the Church of Scotland.
 

Other matters

As is done in other parts of this web-site and elsewhere, there is no distinction made between “Mac” and “Mc” in the Index.

The second part of Mac/Mc names presents a problem: for example, is the name “Macdonald” or “MacDonald”? The two obvious sources for determining the correct spelling of the names of ministers – Lamb’s Fasti and the Index of Scotlandspeople – both print names in capital letters and it is not possible to determine accurately which form should be employed when written in lower case. I have made no attempt to present such names consistently when written in lower case. Perhaps, even at the time, such names were not written or recorded consistently.
 

Place Names

The book used the common names of places at the time that Lamb was referring to. These names have been retained here, though some are now out of date and are not viewed favourably. I have not inserted the modern names into the text but give here a list of places whose names have been changed. If I have omitted any place and this has caused offence, I apologise: any omission was unintentional.