(4 Nov. 1809-30 June 1880), clergyman. (Rev Dr Walter Macgilvray, Walter McGilvray) Born at Bowmore, Island of Islay, Scotland. Parents: Malcolm Macgilvray, a collector of customs, and his wife Anne Macmillan. He was married at Irstead, Norfolk, to Maria Hooker on 24 March 1846. (nine children) Maria Hooker was the daughter of Sir William Hooker and sister of Sir Joseph Hooker, two of the greatest botanists of the 19th century. Sir Joseph Hooker was a close associate and valued co-worker of Charles Darwin. A few months after the marriage Walter Macgilvray and his wife left for Canada, where he was being sent as a deputy of the Free Church. He acted as a supply minister to the Presbyterians at Vankleek Hill and of the Lochiel congregation at Kirk Hill during the winter of 1846-1847 “and other shorter periods thereafter.” (MacMillan 136) During this time (altogether, apparently not more than a year and a half) he appears to have actually had his home at Vankleek Hill and to have travelled to Kirk Hill for the services there.

     In the Aug. 1847 issue of The Home and Foreign Missionary Record (Edinburgh), a Free Church publication, he published a long and most unflattering letter criticizing the religious backwardness in which the Glengarrians had lived since the time of first settlement. The Rev. Alexander Mathieson, writing under the initials N.M.I.L. (nemo me impune lacessit, no one provokes me with impunity), made a cutting and effective reply in the Jan. 1848 issue of The Presbyterian, a Canadian publication of the Presbyterians who had continued their association with the established Church of Scotland. The biographical sketch of Mcgilvray published in 1913 shows him to have been a highly combative man, and the letter of 1847 can be seen as fitting into a pattern of strife and uncompromising positions. In Canada, he preached in both English and Gaelic. He mentions that his weekly prayer meeting in the Vankleek Hill church was “conducted alternately in English and in Gaelic.” Before he returned to Britain, Walter Macgilvray received, in 1847, the honorary degree of D. D. from Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. In the following years of his clerical career, Dr Walter Macgilvray held parishes in Scotland. He died at Canaan Grove, Morningside, Edinburgh. He was the author of many writings, published and unpublished, on religious themes.

     For a GC clergyman of almost the same period who studied botany under Sir William Hooker, see life of Rev. James Drummond.

Robert Murdoch Lawrance, Rev. Dr. Walter Macgilvray Aberdeen (7 pp., with portrait, repr. from The Aberdeen Book-Lover, Nov. 1913; includes tentative list of his writings), copy in British Library * MacMillan, Kirk, 136, 239-240 * Boase, II, 605 * James Croil, Life of the Rev. Alex. Mathiesen (1870) 100 * letters also from Macgilvray in The Ecclesiastical and Missionary Record, for the Presbyterian Church of Canada (Jan., Feb. 1848) 31, 52 * Bibliography of Glengarry 8 * information from Lafayette College