George Barclay

George Barclay (1774-1838) was born into a dissenting family in Kilwinning, Ayrshire. He was apprenticed at thirteen to a cabinet-maker. About 1790 he was converted and shortly thereafter was called to preach. He married in 1796 and left for Paisley, where he prepared for the Congregational ministry. Encouraged by Robert Haldane, Barclay entered an academy established by the Haldanes at Dundee in late 1799, but the next spring moved to Glasgow to study under Greville Ewing. In April 1802 he began ministering in Kilwinning as part of a mission effort to the outer areas of Scotland. During his first year at Kilwinning, he became an immersionist and in December 1803 formed a Baptist church, independent of all other Baptist churches in Scotland or England. Established as an “English” Baptist church (he did not follow the Scotch Baptist model), his church nevertheless reflected the influence of the Haldane congregational model. His interest in the Baptist movement and the missionary effort brought him into close contact with Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, John Sutcliff, and Christopher Anderson, becoming “their companion and aid when they visited the north on behalf of the Mission.”  As Hugh Anderson writes, “Their letters to him, of which there are many among his papers, breathe the warmth, and generous nature of their Christian friendship. He was also the correspondent of Carey, and Marshman, and Ward, and Judson; and in all the trials and triumphs of the Baptist Mission he ever took the deepest interest.” He played an important part in the reunification of the BMS and the Serampore Mission in 1837-1838 (his son, a BMS missionary, had died in Calcutta in 1837). Along with Christopher Anderson, Barclay helped establish an itinerant society for Scotland in 1807 and regularly conducted preaching tours of western Scotland, using the tour also as a means of promoting the work of the BMS. Barclay traveled to Ireland with John Saffery of Salisbury in July-August 1813 on behalf of the BMS. See Hugh Anderson, Letters of Christopher Anderson (Edinburgh: W. P. Kennedy, 1854), 48; John Leechman, “Memoir of the Late Rev. George Barclay,” Baptist Magazine 31 (1839): 1-5; Derek B. Murray, “Christopher Anderson and Scotland,” in A Mind for Mission: Essays in Appreciation of the Rev. Christopher Anderson (1782-1852), ed. Donald E. Meek (Edinburgh: Scottish Baptist History Project, 1992), 4, 6; D. W. Bebbington, ed., The Baptists in Scotland: A History (Glasgow: Baptist Union of Scotland, 1988) 33-35; and Brian Talbot, The Search for a Common Identity: The Origins of the Baptist Union of Scotland 1800–1870. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 9 (Carlisle UK: Paternoster Press, 2003), 109, 115, 123.