Olituarij Notices. 
XXIX 
Rev. Thomas Brown, D.D. By Professor Duns, D.D. 
(Read March 19, 1894.) 
Thomas Brown was born on the 23rd of April 1811, in the manse 
of Langton, Berwickshire, of which parish his father, the Rev. John 
Brown, D.D., was minister. Mr Brown entered the University of 
Edinburgh in 1826, and, at the close of his Arts course, was 
enrolled as a student of divinity. His academical record was that 
of an able and diligent student, who gave himself earnestly to the 
work of the classes, and took a lively interest in more than one 
university debating society. Mr Brown was licensed as a proba- 
tioner of the Church of Scotland in 1835, and in 1837 was settled 
as parish minister of Kineff, Presbytery of Fordoun, Aberdeenshire. 
At the Disruption of the Church in 1843, Mr Brown joined the 
ministers and laymen who then formed the Free Church. In 1848 
he was married to Miss Wood, a member of an old and well-known 
Edinburgh family.* In 1849 he accepted a call to be minister of 
the Dean Free Church, Edinburgh, and in this position made 
thorough proof of a ministry solid, full of instruction, and withal 
attractive. 
Mr Brown was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1861. In 
* On her father’s side, Miss "Wood was connected with the Woods of War- 
riston, and on her mother’s with those of Largo. Towards the opening of the 
present century, the former was represented by a popular physician, who 
figures in Kay’s Edinburgh Portraits as “Lang Sandy Wood,” but was also 
known by a kindlier name. In a clever parody of “ Childe Harold,” which 
appeared in Blackwood, May 1818, beginning, “ I stood, Edina, on thy Bridge 
of Sighs,” we have the following lines : — 
“ Munro once ruled and Gregory now reigns ; 
George Bell now feels the pulse which John Bell felt. 
Dispensaries, infirmaries, and chains 
Purge, slash, and clank, where’er the cities belt 
Girdles it in — a space that may bp smelt ! 
So we go on, I fear to little good. 
Meanwhile the rivals one another pelt ! 
Oh for one hour of him who knew no feud. 
The octogenarian chief, the kind old Sandy Wood ! ” 
It’s pleasant to gather up any separate link like this, and give it a place in the 
genealogical chain. 
