Park Village
Cample
Dalgarnoc
Other
Born 1738 Elspeth Buchan ne้ Simpson... Scottish
founder of the fanatical religious sect known as the Buchanites and announced
herself to her followers as the Woman of Revelations 12.
An entry in the Dictionary of National Biography says that Mrs. Elspeth Buchan
(1738-1791) was the daughter of an innkeeper near Banff. During a visit to
Greenock she met and married Robert Buchan, a potter. They separated and in 1781
she moved with his children to Glasgow, where she heard the Revd. Hugh White
preach. She was so impressed that she moved to Irvine and persuaded Mr. White
that she was a saint specially privileged by Heaven. Mr. White declared from the
pulpit she was the woman mentioned in Revelations while she declared the
Minister to be the child the woman brought forth. Mr. White was deposed and the
magistrates of Irvine exiled the sect.
Robert Burns heard her preach in Irvine and reported "their tenets are a
strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among others she pretends to give them
the Holy Ghost by breathing on them which she does by with postures and gestures
which are scandalously indecent. They have likewise a community of goods and
live nearly an idle life in barns and woods where they lodge and lie together
and hold likewise a community of women as it is another of their tenets that
they can commit no mortal sin."
They settled in Dumfriesshire and as they did not believe in marriage led a holy
life like brothers and sisters. Elspeth Buchan and her followers the Buchanites
moved to New Cample Farm in Nithsdale. They lived temporarily in an old barn
whilst they built a rough community house known as 'Buchan Ha'. Here they
suffered further persecution, but managed to stay on growing to 60 members until
local magistrates forced them out.
Lodged in the house from April 1784 to March 1787. Once she was assailed as a
witch, but protected by the sheriff, who afterwards tried 42 of the rioters.
They eventually moved to Crocketford where she died. The cottage still survives
south of Thornhill in a field east of the A76. They also did not believe in
regular paid employment.
The society came to an end when Mrs Buchan shattered the illusions of her
followers in 1791 by dying a natural death.
The end of the Buchanite saga came in 1846,
when the last Buchanite Andrew Innes, died. Andrew Innes, who lived in the
(still existing) Buchanite last abode, "Newhouse", Crocketford, had
expected a "resurrection" of the mummified body of Mother Buchan on
March 29th 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death. Innes was disappointed and
died at "Newhouse" in 1846, which coincided with the discovery of
Mother Buchan's hidden, mummified body
it has been said that Robert Burns had a secret lover who was a member of the Buchanites and some people think he may actually have been involved with the sect but there is no evidence of this.