An article from THE Aberdeen Leopard,
This is the first of several articles on the links between North East Scotland and Australia to mark the Bicentennial.
There can be few who have not heard of the Australian-born Rupert Murdoch, one of the 20th century’s most determined and successful newspaper tycoons. His titles in the UK range from The Times and The Sunday Times at one end of the spectrum, to The Sun and The News of the World at the other. In his native land and in the USA his media and other related interests are extensive.
But the young Murdoch’s family home in Australia was called Cruden, and to this day, the family holding company is Cruden Investments. This indicates a strong feeling for one’s roots, and it is precisely this North East aspect of Rupert Murdoch’s heritage that Margaret Aitken now explores.
In the Sunday Telegraph, last year Mary Kenny spoke about the grudging little mind of David Steel, who objects to Mr. Rupert Murdoch owning so many newspapers in Britain because Murdoch is a “foreigner”. Ms. Kenny then went on to decry “nationalism” as exemplified by Mr. Steel’s unfortunate remark.
However, the remark was unfortunate in more ways than one, for Rupert Murdoch, if he so wishes, and he did so to assist me with this article, can trace his roots, and they are not particularly tenuous, back to Scotland’s north-east corner of Buchan.
From 1846–1857 Rupert Murdoch’s great grandfather, the Reverend George Brown, a native of Tarves, was minister of the Free Church in Hatton in the parish of Cruden.
The Free Church, founded in 1843, was the spiritual home of dynamic clergy, of men who held strong convictions, and had the courage to stand by them and act upon them. They believed passionately that congregations should be free to choose and appoint their ministers, and not have the choice of a patron forced upon them. For this and other strongly held beliefs they were prepared to give up their secure pulpits in the established church, move out and start new places of worship in which they could conduct their ministries in accordance with their radically different opinions. This upheaval in 1843 was appropriately named the Disruption.
George Brown, a graduate of Aberdeen University, aged 24 when the Disruption took place, came to an almost newly built stone church near the mill in Hatton. It had replaced a hastily erected wooden building. He worked hard and faithfully in Cruden, ministering conscientiously to the poor among his parishioners and gaining the reputation of being a notable preacher.
He had a school built. This school was an offshoot of the Free Church of Cruden, and he had a manse put up whereupon the cottage, up till then occupied by the minister, became the abode of the schoolmaster.
During his ministry in Hatton he received two “calls” — one to Greenock, one to Paisley. These he declined.
George Brown wooed and won Miss Mary Smith Shepherd. They were married in 1855. Mary Shepherd’s father Rupert Murdoch’s maternal great-great-grandfather was the owner of the estate of Aldie. He was an interest member of the established church of Cruden, and when more than 400 members of the congregation followed the young, ardent, fiery Alexander Philip away from the church of their fathers to set up the new Free Church in Hatton, James Shepherd of Aldie remained with the established church.
He was too strong. In his case his courage took the form of standing firm against the popular tide and powerful persuasiveness of his determined young minister, the Rev. Alexander Philip. One wonders how he felt when Alexander Philip’s successor, George Brown, minister of the church in opposition, became his son-in-law.
Many life-long friendships were ruptured over the Disruption. Bad feeling was rife. When members of both congregations chanced to meet on the way to their respective places of worship, jostling and pushing often took place as neither body of worshippers would clear a way for the other faction to pass.
James Shepherd of Aldie surely did not join in the pettiness and quarrelsomeness that pre-
