Author: Smith, Hugh
Biography:
SMITH, Hugh (1812-93: Scottish N&Q)
He was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on 9 July 1812 and baptised on 12 July at the Relief Congregation, the son of John Smith, agent, and his wife Jean (or Jane) Milne. His father was originally a weaver. After the publication of the work listed here, he went to Glasgow University to study for the congregational ministry. He was then minister at Brechin, Falkland, and at a parish on the outskirts of Glasgow where he was also a Sunday School teacher, studied medicine, and qualified as MD. He married Helen Elder (1811-85), the daughter of Rev. John Elder of Leven, Fife, on 30 Mar. 1846, at her parish of Scoonie, Fife. They went on to have a daughter and two sons. In the 1851 census he is recorded as a chemist and druggist, living with his family at Govan, Renfrewshire. He emigrated to Australia in Oct. 1852, settled at Newstead, Castlemaine, and practised for many years as minister and physician/surgeon. He died from acute bronchitis on 24 Sept. 1893, aged 81, at 410 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, Bourke, Australia, and was buried in Melbourne Cemetery. The Poetical Miscellany of Morals and Religion (1832) contains political poems on freedom, the downfall of Poland, the Paris Revolution of 1832, and “that great renovating measure” the Reform Bill, but expresses a conformist Presbyterian view of the stage in “The Theatre, or The Devil’s Recruiting Party.” “Elegiac Stanzas” records the death of a sister in 1831. (Scottish N&Q Nov. 1891, 91; Scotland’s People; ancestry.co.uk 12 Mar. 2024; Argus [Melbourne] 26 Sept. 1893; BDM Victoria, Death cert.) AA