by James McClelland
May 30th is Presbyterian Heritage Sunday, so I would like to share some of my own history as a Presbyterian.
I was born in a Catholic hospital, delivered by a Jewish doctor to Presbyterian parents. I was raised Presbyterian. My father was an elder of the church. I was told that he had some part in the ground work to the reunification of the old northern and southern branches of the church.
He had three cousins who by coincidence shared the same birthday. One is a music director of a Presbyterian church. The other two are ministers of Presbyterian churches.
The church he was raised in is one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in Virginia, built on land that once belonged to the McClelland family. Several generations of McClellands are buried in its cemetery. The second minister of that church was the Rev. Samuel Houston, an uncle of Sam Houston born in Virginia, but forever claimed by Texas. That church, Highbridge Presbyterian Church is in Natural Bridge, Rockbridge County, Virginia. The first recorded white man in Rockbridge County was a Presbyterian minister to whom I may be related to.
I have done some research on the history of Clan McClelland in America and Scotland. In my studies I found that the McClelland family has a Presbyterian heritage back to the Reformation.
The Reformation had taken a firm hold on most of Scotland. However, King Charles I saw himself as head of the church. Rejecting the Presbyterian principle of the church as a self-governing organization free from interference from King or Pope, in 1637 he attempted to introduce an Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. In February 1638 in Greyfriar’s Churchyard in Edinburgh, Scotland, thousands signed a National Covenant rejecting the King’s aims. In the next few months an estimated 300,000 people signed the covenant.
The result was civil war that spread from Scotland to Ireland and England. In 1685 three young women covenanters were apprehended. Margaret McLaughlan, age 60, Margaret Wilson MacLellan, age 18 and her sister, Agnes, age 13, were put in prison. After a mockery of a trial the three were found guilty and the two eldest were sentenced to die. On May 11 they were tied to stakes in the tidal estuary of the river Bladnoch near Wigtown, Scotland. They were told to recant their faith or die. One went silently and stoically to her fate. The young lass of my clan prayed and sang hymns till she drowned,
praising God with her last breath.
Above Wigtown is the Martyrs Monument in her memory and the memory of others who died for the cause of religious freedom. The inscription to my kinswoman reads:
Let earth and stone still witness bear
There lies a virgin martyr here
Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of His church and no more crime.
But not abjuring Presbytery
And her not owning prelate
They her condemned, by unjust law
Of heaven and hell they stood no awe
Within the sea tied to a stake
She suffered for Christ Jesus’ sake
The actors of this cruel crime
Was Legg, Strachan, Winram and Grahame
Neither young lives, nor yet old age
Could stop the fury of their rage.
This is my proud heritage.