BURNS, THOMAS (1796-1871), the first minister of the Presbyterian congregation in Otago, was a son of Gilbert Burns (brother of the poet), and was born in the farmhouse of Mossgiel, Ayrshire, where Robert himself spent his childhood. After attending the parish school he went to Wallace Hall Academy, in Closeburn, Dumfriesshire (where Edward Irving was one of the teachers), and when his father left the farm in Dumfriesshire he went to the Grammar School at Haddington. Burns entered himself in 1812 at the University of Edinburgh to study for the ministry of the Established Church of Scotland. While still there he was tutor in the family of Sir John Dalrymple in Berwickshire, and, being licensed in 1823, he received from Sir Hugh Dalrymple the presentation of the parish of Ballantrae, to which he was inducted in 1826. There he laboured for four years, and in 1830 he accepted the parish of Monkton, Ayrshire. Early in that year he married Clementina, daughter of the Rev James Francis Grant, rector of Merston, Sussex, and a canon of Chichester Cathedral.

Burns was still ministering to the parish of Monkton when the disruption came in 1843, and, sacrificing position and emoluments amounting to £400 a year, he threw in his lot with the Free Church. He remained in Monkton as a minister of the Free Church for two years longer, and established Free Churches in various parishes where the ministers had stuck to the Established Church. In 1843 Burns became interested in the scheme for a Free Church settlement in New Zealand. It was adopted by the Assembly of the Free Church, and a few months later Burns accepted the offer of the post of minister to the first congregation in New Edinburgh. Though the scheme was temporarily suspended, Burns did not lose sight of it, and brought it before many of his farmer parishioners. When the negotiations were renewed he stuck tenaciously to the idea of a Free Church colony, with church, school and constitution complete, and he spent twelve months without salary advancing the project. The horizon being still clouded by the financial difficulties of the New Zealand Company, Burns felt himself no longer justified in remaining unemployed, and in 1846 he accepted the parish of Portobello, near Edinburgh. He spent about 18 months in that charge before the Otago scheme reached the stage at which he was able to sail with his wife and family in the Philip Laing, which reached Port Chalmers on 15 Apr 1848.

Thereafter Burns spared no energy in ministering to the spiritual needs of his widely scattered congregation. For six years, unaided, he travelled the length and breadth of the Otago block, wherever Presbyterians were settled, working the vast parish. His first relief came in 1854, when the Revs W. Bannerman and W. Will arrived to take charge respectively of the Clutha and Taieri districts. Where church and state were so closely united the minister was constantly called into counsel upon questions affecting the social, economic and even the political welfare of the people. Twenty years of arduous and at times anxious ministration took toll of his erstwhile robust health, and he welcomed sincerely the arrival of his assistant, the Rev G. Sutherland, in 1868. Sutherland took much of the work of First Church off his shoulders, so that Burns was shortly able to abstain from an active part in the affairs of the congregation. He died on 23 Jan 1871, and his widow in 1878.

Burns's labours had been crowned long since by the gratitude of the widespread congregation which he had led into the wilderness. The success of his ministry and the triumph of his personality were marked in a distinctive manner by his old University, which in 1861 conferred upon him the doctorate of divinity (one of the first honorary degrees conferred upon Free Church ministers). The passion for education was dominant in Burns throughout his life. He was elected (10 Nov 1869) chancellor of the University of Otago, but he did not live to see the inaugural ceremony. (See A. J. BURNS)

Chisholm; E. N. Merrington, A Great Coloniser 1929; Hocken, Otago; Mcindoe; Barr; Cycl. N.Z., iv (p); Otago Daily Times, 24 Jan 1871, 5 Oct 1891, 17 Jan 1930 (P).

Reference: Volume 1, page 77

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