Old photograph of the Auld Kirk in Beith in North Ayrshire, Scotland. On site of original parish church. A church was built around 1590 with later 18th century extensions. The 1590 church was demolished in 1810 when a new church was built up the hill. Part of the 18th century extensions and belfry were retained with the burial ground, which contains some original gravestones. Plaque marks links with Reverend John Witherspoon, a signatory to the US Declaration of Independence and parish minister in Beith from 1745 to 1757. John Witherspoon was born on February 5, 1722, at Gifford, a parish of Yester. He was a Scottish American Presbyterian minister and a Founding Father of the United States. Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish Common Sense Realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey from 1768 to 1794; now Princeton University, became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Politically active, Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. He was the only active clergyman and the only college president to sign the Declaration. Later, he signed the Articles of Confederation and supported ratification of the Constitution. In 1789 he was Convening Moderator of the First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Witherspoon and his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery, had a total of 10 children, only five of which survived to accompany their parents to America. James, the eldest, a young man of great promise graduated from Princeton in 1770, and joined the American army as an aide to General Francis Nash, with the rank of major. The next youngest son, John, graduated from Princeton in 1774, practiced medicine in South Carolina, and was lost at sea in 1795. David, the youngest son, graduated the same year as his brother, married General Nash's widow, and practiced law in New Bern, North Carolina. Anna, the eldest daughter, married Reverend Samuel Smith on June 28, 1775. Reverend Samuel Smith succeeded Dr. Witherspoon as President of Princeton in 1775. Frances, the youngest daughter, married Dr. David Ramsay, a delegate from South Carolina to the continental Congress, on March 18, 1763. Witherspoon had suffered eye injuries and was blind by 1792. He died in 1794 on his farm Tusculum, just outside Princeton, and is buried along Presidents Row in Princeton Cemetery.[19] An inventory of Witherspoon's possessions taken at his death included " two slaves . . . valued at a hundred dollars each, " indicating that he owned slaves during his life.
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