GORDON, Thomas of Milne of Smithston

  Research Notes:

MILNE OF SMITHSTON

"Mill of Smithston – Fr Andrew Oliver's mission station at Rhynie in Aberdeenshire. 10."

"Mill of Smithston

More information has emerged about the mass-centre which featured in Mary Harding's account of Andrew Oliver, the mature student at Scalan who found his true vocation with the Augustinian nuns at Douai (ScN 9). Readers will recall that the convert clergyman was moved from Aberdeen because of friction with local Presbyterians and left Mill of Smithston in poor health, frustrated that he had only been able to make five or six converts. In Christine Johnston's 'Secular clergy of the Lowland District, 1732-1829' (IR, May 1983), where mission stations are listed, we read MILL OF SMITHSTON...

As you descend the Cabrach road towards Rhynie the farm sign Mains of Lesmoir marks the spot, across the road from the former castle of the Gordons of Lesmoir. There is hardly a trace of it now. It featured at the end of the Montrose campaigns when a garrison of the Irish troops who did so much to create a Scottish hero were shot outside the walls in 1645. The same happened at Huntly. The Gordons of Lesmoir became the Gordons of Mill of Smithston, a mile or two to the east - a process of humbling papist gentry which can be seen all over North-east Scotland. A Jesuit of the post-Reformation period went from there to become a considerable scholar in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Paris. A secular priest was responsible for the Huntly mission (including his family home) between 1741 and 1761, when he died. Both were called John Gordon."

from Scalan News
Note: Andrew Oliver the priest referred to lived at the end of the eighteenth century, much later than this Thomas Gordon.

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Thomas married Barbara GORDON, daughter of Sir Adam GORDON of Park and Helen TYRIE 'of Drumkilbo'. (Barbara GORDON was born about 1628.)