Len, Elwyn Thank you so much for your time spent to track down the information I am looking for. I sent an email to the Presbyterian Historical Society in Belfast. We’ll see what comes from it. I will post back to CTI when I hear from them. Tom From: elwyn soutter Tom/Len, Much obliged to Len for looking for Rev Maclear. I would still recommend contacting the PBS in Belfast. The lady likely to deal with your enquiry is Valerie Adams. She’s very knowledgeable - she used to be the head of PRONI - and there’s not much she doesn’t know about Presbyterian Ministers. In addition to the main published guides Len has used, sometimes referred to as FASTI, she has notebooks with additional information, including all the various seceder branches of Presbyterianism. She might have something, and if she doesn’t she’ll probably be interested in him because she is trying to ensure there is information on every Minister who has ever had a congregation in Ireland. Even from very early times (ie mid 1600s) a Presbytery had to approve the appointment of a new Minister, and so there are pretty good records of most of them. But I am sure there may be small gaps. The Rev Maclear should have had a degree, and he would almost certainly have obtained that in Scotland. (Presbyterians couldn’t obtain a theology degree in Ireland till the mid 1800s. Trinity was the only College/University in Ireland then and you had to be Church of Ireland to study theology there). So Presbyterians went to Scotland. In the 1700s and early 1800s there were 4 universities in Scotland: St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow & Edinburgh. They keep pretty good records of their old graduates and you could contact them to see if any has a record of him attending or matriculating. I have done that in the past with success. It’s worth noting that not everyone matriculated. There was an additional fee for matriculation. Some couldn’t or wouldn’t afford it and so just did the course, which was generally acceptable in those times. Even in medicine it wasn’t mandatory to pass an exam until the mid 1800s. Just having attended the course was considered sufficient to enable you to practice, which is fairly thought provoking. It was enough to have been there! Elwyn On Fri, 6 Dec 2019 at 08:21, Len Swindley <[email protected]> wrote:
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