David Ritchie (moderator)
The Very Rev Prof David Ritchie FRSE DD was a late 18th and early 19th century Scottish minister who served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for the year 1814/15.Life
He was born in Methven in Perthshire in 1763. He studied divinity at the University of St Andrews, and was licensed to preach by the Church of Scotland in 1789.
Awaiting a patron, he spent some time as the schoolteacher at Gask, a small village west of Perth. Not until 1798 did he obtain a post as an assistant minister, eventually rising to minister, at Penicuik south of Edinburgh. He then moved in quick succession to Kilmarnock and then to St Andrew's Church on George Street in Edinburgh.
In 1808 he left the ministry to become Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh. At that time he lived at 104 Princes Street. In 1811 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Dr John Barclay, Thomas Charles Hope, and Rev Andrew Brown. The University of Edinburgh awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1813.
He retired in 1836 and died at home on 10 January 1844, at 28 Broughton Place in east Edinburgh. He is buried in New Calton Burial Ground.
