A
BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY
OF THE
WORTHIES OF IRELAND.
JOHN ABERNETHY,
An eminent presbyterian divine, was born on the 19th of October, 1680, at Coleraine, in the county of Londonderry. His father was a dissenting minister in that town, and his mother of the family of the Walkinshaws, of Renfrewshire in Scotland. After remaining under the care of his parents for nine years, he was separated from them by a chain of circumstances, which, in the end, proved highly favorable. His father had been employed by the presbyterian clergy to transact some public affairs in London, at a time when his mother, to avoid the tumult of the insurrections in Ireland, withdrew to Derry. Their son was at that period with a relation, who in the general confusion determined to remove to Scotland, and having no opportunity of conveying the child to his mother, carried him off along with him. Thus he providentially escaped the dangers attending the siege of Derry, in which Mrs. Abernethy lost all her other children. Having spent some
