8328: John Bethune

John Bethune, born 1792, married Janet Graham Simpson (Unie or Una) of Keose Manse. Together they had at least one child, a son, Alexander.

John was ordained, becoming the first minister at Berneray’s Established Church on 27th April 1829. He lived with his family in the newly built Manse, which was, with the Church, one of 32 designed by Telford.

During his lifetime Reverend John Bethune appears to have been a controversial figure on Berneray. Whilst supported by many of his congregation, 180 of whom praised his ‘mildness, kindness and affability’, stating he was ‘a worthy, pious clergyman, most attentive to his duties’, other parishioners protested to the Presbytery of Uist about his behaviour, particularly the fact that he was ‘a drunkard in habit and repute’.  Most of the congregation ‘all but a handful’, left to join the Free Church on Berneray. When Dr Norman MacLeod, Caraid na Gàidheal, visited Berneray in 1847, he reported  ‘I preached and gave a long address, then had a painful meeting with the minister – indolent, useless as a clergyman, all having left him, except about a dozen: strange to me that one was found to abide!’

Reverend Bethune passed away at the Manse in 1851.