# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morison, James (1708-1786)

​MORISON, JAMES (1708–1786), of Elsick, provost of Aberdeen, born in 1708, fifth son of James Morison, merchant in Aberdeen, was elected provost of Aberdeen in 1744, and held office at the outbreak of the Jacobite rising in the autumn of 1745. Morison and the town council resolved to put the burgh in a state of defence on the ground that 'there is ane insurrection in the highlands,' but on the representation of Sir John Cope [q. v.] the guns of the fort at the harbour and the small arms were sent to Edinburgh (15 Sept.), and the burgh was left without means of defence. On 25 Sept. a new town council was elected ; but before the new and old members could meet for the election of a successor to Morison and the other magistrates, John Hamilton, chamberlain to the Duke of Gordon, representing the Pretender, entered the town, and the councillors took to flight. Morison's term of office had just expired, but, no new provost having been elected, he was summoned to appear before Hamilton. He hesitated, and, after a second message had threatened that his house would be burnt if he refused to appear, he was carried prisoner to the town house. Two other magistrates were also brought from their hiding-places, and the three men were forced to ascend to the top of the Town Cross and hear the proclamation of King James VIII. ​Morison declined to drink the health of the newly proclaimed king, and the wine was poured down his breast. Lord-president Forbes commended his conduct in the crisis. He died on 5 Jan. 1786, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
Morison married in 1740 Isobell, eldest daughter of James Dyce of Disblair, merchant in Aberdeen, by whom he had a family of five sons and eleven daughters. Of his sons, two reached manhood: Thomas Morison (d. 1824), an army surgeon, is best known for the share he had in bringing into notice the medicinal springs of Strathpeffer, Ross-shire. His portrait was presented to him in recognition of these services, and no whangs in the pump-room hall there. The younger son, George Morison (1757-1845), after graduating at Aberdeen, was licensed as a probationer of the church of Scotland in January 1782, and was in the following year ordained minister of Oyne, Aberdeenshire, from which he was translated to Banchory-Devenick in 1785. He continued there during a long ministry of sixty-one years, receiving the degree of D.D. from Aberdeen University in 1824, and succeeding his brother in the estates of Elsick and Disblair in the same year. His benefactions to his parish were large, chief among them being the suspension bridge across the Dee, which was built by him at a cost of 1,400l. and is still the means of communication between the north and south portions of the parish. He died, 'Father of the Church of Scotland,' on 13 July 1845. Besides two sermons (1831-2) and accounts of Banchory in Sinclair's 'Statistical Account,' he published 'A Brief Outline . . . of the Church of Scotland as by Law Established,' Aberdeen, 1840, 8vo; and 'State of the Church of Scotland in 1830 and 1840 Contrasted,' Aberdeen, 1840, 8vo. He married in 1786 Margaret Jeffray (d. 1837), but left no issue (Hew Scott, Fasti Eccles. Scotic. pt. vi. pp. 493, 597).
[Records of Burgh of Aberdeen; family knowledge.]
R. M.