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history |
Rev James Calder MacPhail DD (1821-1908) was minister of Pilrig Free Church, Edinburgh, but had a particular interest in education in the Highlands and Islands. A native Gaelic speaker born in Lochbroom, Wester Ross, Dr. MacPhail was responsible for the creation of a bursary scheme for the Free Church of Scotland, instituted in 1869, to send Gaelic-speaking boys from areas of the Highlands and Islands, many desiring to study for the ministry of the Church but then without schools able to take them to a level to enable them to enter university, by sending them 'to a Grammar School in a University town, that they might there obtain ? a preparation for college'. The papers in this collection relate entirely to the work of the SSPCK and a campaign to change the emphasis of the society, in which Dr MacPhail was heavily involved. |