The Rev Robert Cunningham

 

The Reverend Robert Cunningham.

 


My first post explained what, or indeed who, had started me on my family history journey so I thought it was only fair that this week I tell you all a bit about the man himself.

 

Robert Cunningham was born on 17th August 1799 in Stranraer in the South West of Scotland, son of Andrew Cunningham and Janet McBryde. His father was a merchant trading in and around the Irish Sea.

 

Although he studied for the ministry at Edinburgh University, Robert was first and foremost a schoolmaster. His father died around 1819 and he had to take up employment as headmaster of Saltoun Parish School to support his widowed mother and younger siblings. He continued to teach in and around the East of Scotland and in 1826 took up the post of House Governer at George Watson’s College, Edinburgh.

 

In 1832 he became the founding headmaster of the Edinburgh Institution and on 28th October 1832 married Elizabeth Jeffrey, the daughter of John Armstrong Jeffrey and Elizabeth Catherine McConnell.

 

The Edinburgh Institution was a forward thinking educational establishment with a more broad based curriculum with emphasis on modern languages rather than the classics, literature, sciences and mathematics. The school that Robert founded eventually moved to Melville Street in 1920, became Melville College in 1936 and merged with Daniel Stewart’s College in 1972 to form Stewart’s Melville College.

 

Robert and Elizabeth had 7 children, the youngest daughter was Agnes Cunningham born in 1846, who married Rev William Armstrong in 1869.

 

In 1837 Robert and his family left Edinburgh to travel to the United States as he had taken up the post of Professor of Ancient Languages and Vice President of Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. A significant number of the Jeffrey family had already emigrated to the Niagara Falls region earlier in the century.

 

The family returned to Scotland in 1839 when Robert took up the post of Rector of the Normal Seminary of the Glasgow Educational Seminary. Robert only stayed in Glasgow for two years, during which time two of his children died. He then took the decision to set up his own school in Polmont settling eventually at Blairlodge House in 1843. He left the school in 1851 and moved back to Edinburgh. The school continued until 1911 when it became Scotland’s first borstal and is now a Young Offenders Institution.

 


During his time at Polmont, Robert was heavily involved in the founding of a Free Church Congregation in 1843.

 

It would appear that after 1851 Robert retired, firstly to Edinburgh, and then in 1859 he returned to Stranraer, buying North West Castle, the former home of the Arctic explorer, Sir James Ross. The house is now a hotel and a memorial plaque to Robert was recently unveiled in the hotel reception.

 


Robert died at his home in Stranraer on 10th August 1883. He is not buried in Stranraer but was returned to Glasgow to be buried in the family plot he purchased when his mother and children died whilst he was living in Glasgow. The grave is marked by a large headstone.





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