Tour Scotland Video Good Shepherd Window Meadowside St Paul's Church Dundee

Tour Scotland travel video of the Good Shepherd stained glass window in Meadowside St Paul's Church, on ancestry, genealogy, family history and trip to Dundee. In grateful remembrance of Helen Halyburton Symers 1906. Miss Symers, of St Helen’s, Dundee was born in about 1831, the last of a long line dating back to the 16th century. Her father was an agent of the British Linen Company Bank. A member of St Paul’s United Free Church, she clearly had a lot of money, and she gave generously. In 1878 she initiated the Fund for Indigent Females with a donation of £10,000 to invest. She gave to the Convalescent Home, Royal Victoria Hospital and the Salvation Army Rescue Home. She gave the site of the Arthurstone Branch Library, and took much interest in its progress. She was also president of Dundee Ladies’ Union, treasurer of the Female Society for Visiting & Relieving Aged Females in Distress, a member of the Industrial Schools Society, and the Home for Reformation of Females. Although she was an office bearer on four voluntary organisations she was said to have had “a retiring nature” but “bounty never unthinking”. In fact, when she was made a burgess 1899 “in recognition of her many acts of wise beneficence to the City and citizens of Dundee” she asked that the ceremony be a private one. University archives record that in 1903: “ In accordance with the wish of Miss Symers who has so generously gifted a large proportion of the purchase money, the ground in front of Ellenbank House (south of Dundee University tower block) is to remain an open space for the city as well as for the college. ” She gave £5,000, with two provisos: that the space remain an open space and that the university did not incur debt i.e. it met the price in full. She died, aged 74, in November 1906, and she is commemorated in the name of Symers Street in Downfield.


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