Mr. Robb, although he had joined the Established Church in St. Andrews

in 1839 retained the manse in Strathkinness, as the census of 1841 records

‘Ralph Robb, Minister’. He did not have a charge in St. Andrews, but he

must have continued to be supported by his congregation which re-joined the

church with him, as well as by fees he would have made when preaching in

other places. He left the Established Church again to join the Free Church.

He was one of four ministers in the St. Andrews area who signed the original

list of adherents to the new Free Church. When the Free Church was esta-

blished in Strathkinness in 1843 he did not become its first minister. He

went to Canada where he became the first Free Church minister, eventually

settling in Upper Canada (Ontario).

The first Free Church minister in Strathkinness was the Rev. Adam

Thorburn who was inducted in 1843, the same year he was ordained.

In the Free Church Presbytery of St. Andrews minutes the reason given for

setting up the new church was ‘the decrease in vital Godliness in the parishes

throughout the land’. Since the Disruption they found a ‘greater regularity

of attendance, more brotherly love, an increased interest in Christianity, and

a growth in grace’. They declared ‘the Sabbath had been openly violated,

though usually by people over whom they have no control’, and they accused

the Established Church of enticing people by immediate entry to sealing

ordinances (communion) without proper instruction. They had also dis-

covered ‘in some districts of the Presbytery small bands of professed infidels

and Socialists who take occasion to scoff at all religion...boasting of their own

superior moral character and honesty of conduct’.

When Mr. Thorburn died in 1855, after a short illness, there was a large

gathering for his funeral at Martyr’s Church in St. Andrews. He was still a

young man when he died, and it is impossible to say what his future might have

been, but he showed signs of being a man of considerable ability and he was

highly regarded in the Free Church. As the first minute book of the Free

Church in Strathkinness covering the period between 1845 and 1855 is missing

the only information of this time is to be found in the St. Andrews Free

Church Presbytery minutes.

The Rev. J.B. Irvine was inducted as the new minister in 1856. At this

time the discipline of the Free Church was what would seem severe to us today.

There was public rebuke before the whole congregation, often announced from

the pulpit in advance. It is written in the minutes in May 1859 ‘Three young

women are to be publicly rebuked on the afternoon of the next Lord’s Day.

Intimation of this [is] to be given from the pulpit’. In 1858 Robert Anderson,

a member of the Free Church was refused baptism of his child for three months

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