John Turnbull

Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia

Reverend John Turnbull was born at Ancrum, Roxburgh, on May 26, 1775, the youngest son of farmer William Turnbull of Know and Robina, daughter of George Cranstoun. He was educated at Jedburgh Grammar School under Mr. Brewster (father of Sir David Brewster) and at the University of Edinburgh. He was ordained as assistant to the Minister at Bressay in 1805. In 1806 he was appointed minister of the United Parishes of Tingwall, Whiteness, and Weisdale and would continue in that post for over 60 years.

On July 29, 1814, Rev. Turnbull embarked from Leith aboard the Northern Lights Commission's yacht on reconnaisance around the Northern Islands. Included among the company of notables was the young Sir Walter Scott whose journal entry for August 7th reads: "Being Sunday, Duff, Erskine, and I, rode to Tingwall upon Zetland ponies, to breakfast with our friend Parson Turnbull, who had come over in our yacht. An ill-conducted and worse-made road served us four miles on our journey. This Via Flaminia of Thule terminates, like its prototype, in a bog. It is, however, the only road in these isles, except about half a mile made by Mr. Turnbull. The land in the interior much resembles the Peel-heights, near Ashestiel; but, as you approach the other side of the island, becomes better. Tingwall is rather a fertile valley, up which winds a loch of about two miles in length. The kirk and manse stand at the head of the loch, and command a view down the valley to another lake beyond the first, and thence over another reach of land, to the ocean, indented by capes and studded with isles; among which, that of St. Ninian's, abruptly divided from the mainland by a deep chasm, is the most conspicuous. Mr. Turnbull is a Jedburgh man by birth, but a Zetlander by settlement and inclination. I have reason to be proud of my countryman; - he is doing his best, with great patience and judgment, to set a good example both in temporals and spirituals, and is generally beloved and respected among all classes. His glebe is in far the best order of any ground I have seen in Zetland.

John Turnbull's gravestone at Tingwall Kirk.

It is enclosed chiefly with dry-stone, instead of the useless turf-dikes; and he has sown grass, and has a hay-stack, and a second crop of clover, and may claim well-dressed fields of potatoes, barley, and oats. The people around him are obviously affected by his example. He gave us an excellent discourse and remarkably good prayers, which are seldom the excellence of the Presbyterian worship. The congregation were numerous, decent, clean, and well-dressed. The men have all the air of seamen, and are a good-looking hardy race. Some of the old fellows had got faces much resembling Tritons; if they had had conchs to blow, it would have completed them."

In 1812, Rev. Turnbull married Wilhelmina, the youngest daughter of his predecessor Rev. James Sands, minister of Tingwall 1793-1805. Scott had also written: "During the winter of 1837-8, this worthy clergyman's wife, a son, a daughter, and a servant, perished within sight of the manse, from a flaw in the ice on the loch - which they were crossing as the nearest way home." Of four sons and five daughters, only one daughter survived when he passed away at his manse on February 19th, 1867.

An avid agriculturalist, Turnbull was the first to practice planting turnips as a field crop. The Reverend contributed his parishes' report for the New Statistical Account of Scotland, published in 1845.