Author: Skinner, John
Biography:
SKINNER, John (1721-1807: ODNB)
Born at Balfour in Birse, Aberdeenshire, he was the son of Jean (Gillander) and John Skinner. His father was a schoolteacher who was transferred to Echt in 1726 and Skinner was educated there and at Marischal College, Aberdeen (AM 1738). He became a teacher at Monymusk and, at about the same time, joined the Scottish Episcopal church. He was tutor in the family of Robert Sinclair at Scalloway, Shetland; there, in 1741, he married Grissel Hunter whose father was the Episcopal minister of Shetland. They had nine children. Following his ordination, he was appointed to Longside, near Peterhead, in 1742. Although he was not a Jacobite (he swore allegiance to George II), inevitably he was embroiled in the political and religious consequences of the 1745 rising (including a spell in prison in Aberdeen in 1753). He was made Dean of Aberdeen in 1774 and his son, John, became bishop in 1782. Together they arranged for consecrating Samuel Seabury as bishop of Connecticut; this had lasting consequences for the development of the church in America along Scottish rather than English lines. Of his many writings, the most enduring are his songs and his two-volume Ecclesiastical History of Scotland (1788). He died at Aberdeen, in the home of his son, and was buried in the churchyard at Longside. (ODNB 28 Oct. 2020) SR