John Welply Lindsay

The claimed relationship with the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres is unsubstantiated/highly unlikely.

THE REV. JOHN W. LINDSAY.

Our obituary columns of June 22nd chronicled the decease of the Reverend John Lindsay, a gentleman well known and very generally respected, as an earnest and unobtrusive labourer in the cause of education, and as a consistent advocate of temperance principles. Mr Lindsay was born in Ireland in 1804 and was consequently in his 65th year. His parentage was Scotch, and we believe he claimed relationship with the ancient and illustrious family of the same name long since ennobled as Earls of Crawford and Balcarres. Though latterly officiating as a Baptist Minister, Mr Lindsay was educated in the Presbyterian Church and was engaged when a young man as superintendent of the Reformation Society and travelled much in the north of Ireland while employed in that capacity. He was afterwards engaged in missionary work in England, looking after the spiritual wants of the navvies employed on various lines of railroads. In 1859 he arrived in this colony as religious instructor on board a prison ship. He was for some time employed here by the Colonial Missionary Society as an itinerant preacher in the country districts. Subsequently he became connected with the Press and was for a considerable time employed on the literary staff of the H. T. Advertiser. He also started a temperance newspaper of his own, which he conducted for some time. In 1857 he was appointed as a schoolmaster, under the Board of Education, to the school at Port Cygnet, which he conducted for seven years. He then removed to this city, where he again found employment on the staff of the Hobart Town Advertiser, and more recently on that of the Tasmanian Times, He also, we believe, originated, and for some time edited, a paper called the Leader, on very strongly pronounced Protestant principles. For the last 12 months—until incapacitated by the disease which has just proved fatal—Mr Lindsay officiated as minister of the Baptist Chapel in Harrington-street, where he was justly esteemed as an earnest and single-minded preacher of the Gospel. The funeral cortege of the deceased gentleman comprised the leading members of the Baptist congregation in this city, and several other friends. The Rev Mr Cozens addressed the assemblage at the grave, and prayer was offered and the blessing pronounced by the Rev James Allen. Deceased was interred in the Baptist burial ground, New Town, by the side of his daughter, whom himself had followed to the grave about a year ago.

Obituary - Tasmanian Times (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1867 - 1870), Thursday 15 July 1869, page 3