Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison

BOYD, ANDREW KENNEDY HUTCHISON: Established Church of Scotland; b. at Auchinleck (28 m. s. of Glasgow), Ayrshire, Nov. 3, 1825; d. at Bournemouth, Hampshire, England, Mar. 1, 1899. He studied at King's College and the Middle Temple, London, and at the University of Glasgow (B.A., Glasgow, 1846); was ordained minister of Newton-on-Ayr 1851; minister of Kirkpatrick-Irongray, near Dumfries, 1854–59; of St. Bernard's, Edinburgh, 1859–65; first minister of the city of St. Andrews from 1865. He won distinction both as a clergyman and a writer (over the signature A. K. H. B., and the sobriquet "The Country Parson"), and was perhaps the most widely known minister of the Scottish Church. In 1866 he was made chairman of a committee to prepare a new collection of hymns and filled the place with much judgment and tact. He was moderator of the General Assembly in 1890. The most notable of his many books were Recreations of a Country Parson (3 series, London, 1859–78); Leisure Hours in Town (1862); Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson (3 series, 1862–75); The Commonplace Philosopher in Town and Country (1862–64); Counsel and Comfort Spoken from a City Pulpit (1863); The Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson 244(1864); Critical Essays of a Country Parson (1865); Sunday Afternoons in the Parish Church of a University City (1866); Lessons of Middle Age (1867); Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths (1869); Present Day Thoughts (1870); Seaside Musings (1872); A Scotch Communion Sunday (1873); Landscapes, Churches, and Moralities (1874); From a Quiet Place (1879); Our Little Life (2 series, 1881–84); Towards the Sunset, Teachings after Thirty Years (1882); What Set him Right, with other chapters to help (1885); Our Homely Comedy and Tragedy (1887); The Best Last, with other papers (1888); To Meet the Day through the Christian Year (1889); East Coast Days and Memories (1889); Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews (2 vols., 1892), autobiographical reminiscences, continued in St. Andrews and Elsewhere (1894), and Last Years of St. Andrews (1896).

Bibliography: Consult, besides the autobiographical sketches mentioned above: A. Lang, in Longman's Magazine, May, 1899; DNB, supplement vol. i, 244–245.