This is the script written by David Lamb with research by Gardiner McLachlan for the Transatlantic Connection Concert by the Cunninghame Choir held in Beith Community Centre on Saturday the 15th January 2000 to commemorate the life and achievements of the Rev.John Witherspoon.
"In the year of our Lord Seventeen Hundred and Twenty Two, on the fith day of April, I was born John Witherspoon. My family was of the fine Presbyterian stock, my father was a Kirk minister, and my mother traced her lineage back to John Knox.
We resided in the Parish of Yester, and I was sent to attend the Grammer School in Haddington. I showed little aptitude for the classics, and went on to attend the University of Edinburgh, from which Institution I was laureated in May 1739. I became licensed to preach four years later. After some time assisting my father in his Kirk, I was appointed to the Parish of Beith. I was ordained as a minister on the 11th. April 1745, six days after my twenty third birthday.
A few months later I gathered a small band of volunteers from Beith, against the Jacobite Rising. We had no hesitation in following the other presbyteries loyal to the Church of Scotland. We raised a militia 'for the support of our religion and liberty, and in defence of our only rightful, and lawful sovereign, King George, against his enemies engaged in the rebellion'.
We marched to Glasgow, whereupon we were ordered to return home. Not for the first time in my life, I did not do as I was told. I dismissed the men and carried on to the battle of Falkirk, where I was a spectator with several others. Unfortunately, during the battle we were captured, and thrown into the castle of Doune as prisoners. We were however, able to communicate, and hatched a plan to escape. That night we tied blankets together to form a rope, and at one o'clock in the morning four of our company of seven descended to safety on the ground below. However, the rope broke as the fifth fell and he was seriously injured, but carried to safety. After we attached fresh blankets, my remaining companion attempted the descent, but also fell. Such was the extent of his injuries that the poor fellow later died, and I relinquished hope of escape in a similar manner, and decided to wait until the good Lord found a safer means for me. Although charged with attempting to escape, I was given my liberty, and returned to my Parish in Ayrshire. These were my last glimpses of the horrors of that war, as the rebellion went on to be crushed by the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden.
I was married in 1748, to Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Montgomery of Craighouse. She bore me nine children, although four of them went to the Lord before their seventh birthday. This was not uncommom in our time, as the study of medicine had yet to make many advances, perhaps the reason that two of my sons went on to engage in that profession. While still in Beith, I began to preach and write on matters close to my heart. It greatly disturbed me that those referred to as moderates were preaching complacency, whereas I believed in the doctrines of the Presbyterian Church but in the practical side of Christianity. Also, contrary to the views of the Moderates, I believed that a minister should be chosen by the congregatrion, and not by a 'patron'. I chose to put my views into literature, but not to influence the adoption of those views by exploiting them from the pulpit, and so commenced my writing anonymously. When my publications came to light, I was commended for speaking out, and I acknowledged authorship.
I became considered thereafter as the leader of the Populars. The Moderates at that time wre using intellect and cunning to encourage the move away from some of the traditions of the Kirk. I decided to mould my followers against the views of the Moderates. I was required to instruct them in intelligent debate. Robertson the leader of the Moderates, informed me at the General Assembly, 'I think you have your men better diciplined than formerly'. `Yes' I replied, `By urging your politics too far, you have compelled us to beat you with your own weapons'. The publications of my works, after my acknowledged authorship, brought me greater recognition, and I was appointed minister of Paisley, a flourishing town".
"I never shrank from voicing my beliefs and was prosecuted for libel and defamation after delivering a sermon and publishing a list of names of a group of young men who had mocked the Lord's Supper on the evening before its celebration. The court found my sermon permissable, but the publishing of their names illegal, and I was ordered to pay One Hundred and Eighteen Pounds and Ten Shillings.
Being a Paisley buddy by this time, I of course had no intention of paying, and the amount increased to One Hundred and Fifty Pounds after I appealed. I concluded that I had to concede some defeat in the eyes of the law, and we reached a compromise over payment in 1776, fourteen years after the sermon.
In the meantime, the University of St Andrews conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity on me, and I began to receive many invitations to other Kirks. I declined invitations to become minister of a church in Dundee, a congregation in Dublin and to be pastor of the Scots Kirk in Rotterdam.
I was however, intrigued by the work of the Presbyterians in America, and despite the reservations of some of the female members of my family, accepted an invitation at the second bidding, to become President of the College of Princeton, New Jersey. I resigned my charge in Paisley and my wife, my two daughters, my three sons and I set sail for the colony in the July of 1768.
I found America a land of growth and of greater economic conditions than were prevalent in Scotland. Princeton was a college of want in reform, and only attracted private funding at that time. I managed to procure greater funding for the college, and the institute soon attracted growing numbers of students, who would include many future ministers, and a future President in James Madison.
I also instituted curricular reform, implementing the Scottish system of lectures and the teaching of Hebrow and French. I myself lectured on eloquence, history. philosophy and divinity.
At the outbreak of the War of Independence, the college broke up. I had come to believe in the struggle of the American people, and counted myself one of them. I had always believed that those who govern should be obeyed, though I wrote 'We must obey and submit to them always, till the corruption becomes intolerable'. `Dominion, it is plain from all that has been said, can be acquired by only one way! by consent'.
I gave my wholehearted support to the colonies in the struggle, in which my eldest son fought and died. The citizens of New Jeresey recognised my commitment to the cause and elected me to the general Congress, where I served for seven years. On July 4th. 1776, I signed the Declaration of Independence; I had urged the creation of that document, based in part on that same great document signed on the 6th. of April 1320, The Declaration of Arbroath. When a colleague stated to me in Congress that the Americans 'were not ripe'for such a document, I replied: 'Sir, in my judgement we are not only ripe but rotting!'
Many Scots like me were becoming part of the American nation at that time, due in no small part to the Highland Clearances. With the Act of Proscription having banned the wearing of Tartan, the teaching of Gaelic, the playing of Bagpipes, and the right of Highlanders to gather. How appropriate then, that the date of the Declaration of Arbroath, 6th. April, would one day become Tartans Day in my adopted country. Particularly as between the battle of Culloden in 1746 and the year of my death, tens of thousands had emigrated from Scotland to Canada and the U. S. A. to a new life where they could own their own land and not be subject to tyrannical landowners".
"When I had served in Congress for seven years, standing on over a hundred committees dedicated to the benefit of our land, I voluntarily retired in 1779 handing over the Presidency of Princeton at the same time to Samuel Stanhope Smith, who had married my daughter Anne.
I commited to him the care and instruction of students. I retired to a country seat one mile from the college, which soon regained its former reputation. I lived as many gentlemen did, with two negro slaves, who waited on my wife and myself. . However, I was called again to serve America in 1781, and returned to the Congress. I played a smaller role in politics, but was called to return to Great Britain to promote the American Nation back in my former homeland, and to gain subscriptions for the college, which had suffered greatly during the war. The feeling against the colonists was strong in Britain, but time is a great healer.
I would not live to see the divide between the two countries become narrower, and just as I and many emigrant Scots had brought our own culture to America, so American culture would make its way back into the culture of Great Britain. I returned to visit both Beith and Paisley in my time in Great Britain, which I returned to in 1784, after an absence of sixteen years, which had seen many changes. I returned to America to commence my retirement proper. I was a delegate to the New Jersey convention, which ratified the U. S. Constitution in 1787, and after the death of my wife, remarried at the age of seventy.
My second wife Anne was twenty three at the time of our marriage, and the Lord gave me the ability to look on her for one more year, before I went blind. Born a Scotsman, I died an American. At the age of seventy three, I took my last breath on the 15th day of November in the year of our Lord Seventeen Hundred and Ninety Four. Kind souls put on my epitaph, among other tributes: 'A grave and solemn preacher. Affable, pleasent and courteous in familiar conversation'. "
In June 2001 a statue was erected at the entrance of Paisley University to the memory of the Rev. John Witherspoon.