Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Crockett, Samuel Rutherford
CROCKETT, SAMUEL RUTHERFORD (1860-1914), novelist, was born at the farm of Little Duchrae in the parish of Balmaghie, Kirkcudbrightshire, 24 September 1860. He was the natural son of a daughter of William Crocket, farmer, of Balmaghie, who is reputed to have been descended from refugees who fled from the Continent to Scotland to escape religious persecution. From his fifth to his seventh year Crockett went to Laurieston Free Church school, and for the next nine years attended at Castle Douglas the Free Church school, better known under the name of its head master as Cowper’s school. There Crockett was remarkable for gaiety of disposition, a vivid imagination, and fondness for boyish adventure. At the age of sixteen (1876) he went to Edinburgh University with a bursary of £20 a year, and while still in his ‘teens began a connexion with the daily press by means of which he helped to maintain himself. In 1878 he had six months’ experience of journalism in London, and after finishing the arts course at Edinburgh University in 1879 travelled as a tutor through Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy, and attended classes at Heidelberg University. The impressions received on this tour developed those romantic inclinations which he had exhibited at school and university, with the result that in later life he had frequent recourse to continental scenes for the background of his stories, and spent much of his time abroad.
Crockett decided in 1881 to enter the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland, and studied at New College, Edinburgh (1882-1886); but he was comparatively little known to his contemporaries owing to the rigour of his life, continuing, as he did, the pursuit of journalism while engaged on theological study. At this period he felt his first definite impulse towards novel-writing; his sketches in the Christian Leader, which appeared in book form in 1893 under the title The Stickit Minister, give an indication of his potentialities. He published a volume of poems, Dulce Cor, in 1886. In that year he was ordained to the ministry of the Free church at Penicuik, Midlothian, where he became a popular and hard-working minister. In 1887 he married Ruth Mary, daughter of George Milner, of Moston House, Manchester; two sons and two daughters were born of the marriage. During this period he wrote, among others, his best-known novels, The Raiders (1894) and The Lilac Sun-Bonnet (1894), and the enthusiastic reception of these works confirmed him in his intention to retire from the ministry and devote himself entirely to novel-writing. He accordingly resigned in 1895, and between that year and 1914, when he died (21 April) at Avignon, published over forty books, mainly novels.
Crockett wrote with rapidity and zest, but it cannot be said that his exclusive devotion to novel-writing made for the development of his talent. His vogue, even in his lifetime, suffered a steady decline, and he will be remembered chiefly as the spirited chronicler of Galloway, which he called his ‘little fatherland’. The natural beauties of this district, through which runs the Galloway Dee, inspired all that is most lasting in his work. By utilizing as a background to his best stories the variegated scenery of the district with its meadows and heaths, its rugged sea-coast and lonely lochs, and by writing about this land of feudal forays and covenanting struggles with vigour and a gay, if somewhat crude, humour, he claimed the admiration of men like Robert Louis Stevenson, who dedicated to Crockett one of his best-known poems.
[The Times, 22 April 1914; Glasgow Herald, 22 April 1914; Scotsman, 22 April 1914; Malcolm M. Harper, Rambles in Galloway, 1896.]