page_title: John Brown of Haddington
section_title: Early career
hierarchical_section_title: John Brown of Haddington / Early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial window to Rev John Brown, St Marys, Haddington
context_page_description: John Brown of Haddington, was a Scottish minister and author. He was born at Carpow, in Perthshire. He was almost entirely self-educated, having acquired a knowledge of ancient languages while employed as a shepherd. By his own intense
  application to study, before he was twenty years of age, he had obtained an intimate knowledge of
  the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, with the last of which he was critically conversant. He
  was also acquainted with the French, Italian, German, Arabic, Persian, Syriac, and Ethiopic. His early career was varied, and he was in succession a travelling merchant, a soldier in the Edinburgh garrison in 1745, and a school-master. He was, from 1750 till his death, minister of the Burgher branch of the Secession Church in Haddington. From 1786 he was professor of divinity for his denomination, and was mainly responsible for the training of its ministry. He gained a just reputation for learning and piety. The best of his many works are his Self-Interpreting Bible and Dictionary of the Bible, works that were long very popular. The former was translated into Welsh.
context_section_description: The next few years saw Brown work as a pedlar and a schoolmaster, with an interlude as a volunteer soldier in defence against the Jacobites in the Forty-Five rebellion.  He volunteered with his best friend Tim Knab and for some time was one of the garrison of Edinburgh Castle. When the war was over, he again took up his pack for a time, but soon found more congenial occupation as a schoolmaster. He been teaching in 1747, and taught at Gairney Bridge, near Kinross, and at the Spittal, West Linton. His teaching days were not a relaxing time. He would commit to memory fifteen chapters of the Bible as an evening exercise after the labours of the day, and after such killing efforts, allow himself but four hours of repose.
caption: Memorial window to Rev John Brown, St Marys, Haddington by Edward Burne-Jones
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