Andrew Murray

Andrew Murray, Scottish minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, emigrated to Cape Colony in the late 1820s.

1. Baptised 26/05/1794, youngest son of Andrew Murray and his wife Isobel Milne of Milltown of Clatt, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Attended King's College, Aberdeen 1812-1815 and then King's College, Aberdeen, 1815-16. Awarded an M.A. 1816. Ordained by the Presbytery of Aberdeen in 1821.

2. Murray became one of a number of Scottish Presbyterian ministers, mostly from King's College, Aberdeen, recruited by George Thom to become ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church at the Cape and given superior salaries to what they could have expected in Scotland. He went to Holland for 10 months to learn Dutch and then travelled to South Africa, arriving at Table Bay 02/07/1822. He became minister at Graaff-Reinet where he served for 45 years.

3. In 1824 he married Maria Susanna, daughter of Johan Gotlob Stegmann and Jacomina Sophia Hoppe. They had nine children who survived into adulthood. Of the four boys, three became ministers; of the five girls, four married ministers.

4. "He was a man of deep piety and founded many new congregations. The town of Murraysburg was named after him."

5. Du Plessis’ Life of Andrew Murray [second son of this Andrew Murray] contains an account of the family background and early life of Murray in Scotland and includes transcriptions of his diary entries for 1821-1823 as well as a memoir of his daughter Maria.

1. General Register Office for Scotland OPR Births 180 010 112 Clatt. Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scotianae (London, Oliver and Boyd, 1915-), Vol. 7 pp. 563.

2. 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.

3. Fasti Ecclesiae Scotianae p. 563.

4. Ibid.

5. J. Du Plessis, The Life of Andrew Murray of South Africa (London, Marshall Brothers, Limited, 1919) pp. 13-29.

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