Henry Sutherland

Rev. Henry Sutherland, Scottish minister of the Dutch Reformed Church to emigrated to Cape Colony in 1824.

1. Baptised in Paisley, 21/10/1790, third son of Henry Sutherland. Attended Glasgow University 1811-1815. Ordained by the Presbytery of Glasgow 1823. Recruited by George Thom, he travelled to Cape Colony where he became minister of Worcester from 1824 until his retirement in 1859.

2. "Shortly after the foundation of the village of Worcester a congregation of the D.R. Church had been established, which in 1824 had been able to welcome its first pastor in the person of the Rev. Henry Sutherland, one of the Scotch clergymen who had been secured for South Africa by the efforts of Dr. Thom. Mr. Sutherland was a man of great piety and devotion, though he never succeeded in mastering the Dutch language, and confessed that he was better at prayer than at preaching. His influence, nevertheless, pervaded the congregation, which he served with great faithfulness for more than thirty-five years, and Worcester counted at this time not a few individuals whose religion, though somewhat formal and precise, was by no means lacking in earnestness and reality." Following Sutherland's retirement in 1859, Rev. Andrew Murray [son of the Rev. Andrew Murray, q.v., who had travelled from Scotland with Sutherland in 1824] led a religious revival in the area: "The congregation had been faithfully served by old father Sutherland, but the religion of the majority was merely formal."

1. Dorothea Rowse, 'Presbyterian Ministers at the cape of Good Hope in the early nineteenth century', Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, Vol. 62, April-June 2008, pp. 65-75.

2. J. Du Plessis, The Life of Andrew Murray of South Africa (London, Marshall Brothers, Limited, 1919) pp. 183 and 199.

We are grateful to Dorothea Rowse for her assistance in compiling this entry.