Tombstone Tuesday - Rev. David and Mary MacGregor of Londonderry

This stone is located in Derry, New Hampshire at the Forest Hill Cemetery, in the section known as "First Settlers". These honored gravesites of the Scots Irish founders are marked by an iron fence around their plot. The town was known as Londonderry at the time the Reverend James MacGregor was pastor of the First Church, which is located adjacent to the cemetery. Please note, he was not married to the Mary inscribed across the bottom of his stone!

Memento Mori

Eth mors indies accelerat tamen

Virtus poit Funera vivet

Here lies the dust of him who did provide

Salvation to lost souls in Jesus's Name

His Master call'd to give the great Reward

To those who here ye Flock of Christ regard

The Revd Mr. David Macgregore Son of

The Revd James Macgregore first

Minister in Londonderry

Died March 5 1729

In the 68th Year of his age

To his Memory this Monument

is erected by his Relict and Children

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MRS. MARY McGREGORE

Relict of

Rev. David McGregore

died Sept. 28, 1783

detail - click to enlarge

As his gravestone states, James MacGregor was the first minister of Londonderry, and was considered the leader of the band of Ulster Presbyterians who traveled from Northern Ireland to the New World in 1718. He was probably born in Scotland about 1677 and ordained on 25 June 1701 in Northern Ireland. It is said by tradition that he was in Londonderry, Ireland at the time of the Seige, and he ws the young man who climbed the city wall and fired a gun to tell the inhabitants that the relief ships approached. When the settlers arrived in New Hampshire in 1719, he lead the first religious services under a nut tree near Beaver Lake, which was why it was first called "Nutfield" until renamed "Londonderry".

His son David became the minister of West Londonderry and his wife was Mary Boyd, who is memorialized here at the bottom of her father-in-law's gravestone. Reverend James MacGregor's wife was Marion Cargill, daughter of David Cargill and Janet Smith, married in Aghadowey on 29 August 1706. Mary Boyd was supposedly orphaned at a young age, and was a foster child of James and Marion.

For more information:

Memoir of the Rev. James MacGregor, D.D. by Rev. George Patterson, Philadelphia, 1859

The History of Londonderry, Comprising the towns of Derry and Londonderry, NH., by Edward Lutwyche Parker, Boston: Perkins and Whipple, 1851

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo