DESCENDENTS OF FIRST ELDERS VISIT

Ayr: St Andrew’s Parish Church was visited by descendants of two of the church’s original elders.

John McLelland and his sister Marion are the great grand nephew and niece of William McClelland. William and his son Robert were elders when the church, originally St Andrew’s Free Church, was built in the early 1890s.

John, Marion and her husband Tom were shown round the church by the minister, the Rev Stanley Okeke and session clerk Ian Lamberton. They enjoyed looking through the early church records and photographs, learning of their ancestor’s involvement in the life and witness of the church, as well as the construction of the sanctuary back in 1893. Inside the sanctuary, they saw the window given by the late Margaret McClelland in memory of her grandparents, William and Margaret McClelland as well as Peter Smith McClelland, one of the young men remembered on the war memorial.