Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Mair, William
MAIR, WILLIAM (1830–1920), Scottish divine, the eldest son and fifth child in a family of twelve, was born at Savoch, Aberdeenshire, 1 April 1830. His father, the Rev. James Mair, was the parochial schoolmaster, a licentiate of the Church of Scotland; his mother, Christian Johnston, a cousin, was a member of a farming family long established there. From Aberdeen grammar school he passed to King's College and to Marischal College, Aberdeen, graduating with honours in 1849, and specially distinguished in mathematics.
‘I had never thought’, Mair writes in his autobiography, ‘of any other life-work than the ministry.’ But indifferent health kept him back for seven years; he was thirty-one at the time of his ordination to the mission church of Lochgelly, Fifeshire (October 1861). In 1864 he was translated to Ardoch, and in 1869 to Earlston, Berwickshire. He retired to Edinburgh in 1903, spending his remaining years in church work generally—constant committees, daily interviews, and correspondence on church law—but particularly in the cause of church union. He died in his sleep 26 January 1920, having lived over seventy years in fragile health by an extreme carefulness in diet, clothing, temperature, and exercise. He married in 1866 Isabella, daughter of David Edward, of Balruddery, Dundee.
Mair's remarkable vitality in the midst of bodily weakness, his wisdom in counsel, and his forthrightness in speech, his legal knowledge, his evangelical zeal, and, above all, his spiritual-mindedness, made him for many years a prominent figure in the Church of Scotland and in its General Assembly, of which he was moderator in 1897. His Digest of Laws and Decisions, Ecclesiastical and Civil, relating to the Constitution, Practice, and Affairs of the Church of Scotland, published in 1887, became at once, and remains, the standard authority on Scottish ecclesiastical law.
It is, however, as a pioneer in the cause of church reunion that Mair will be best remembered. A series of articles in Blackwood's Magazine and of pamphlets from 1904 onwards, prepared the way for ‘unrestricted conference’ between committees of his Church and the United Free Church. In 1907 Dr. Archibald Scott [q.v.] made the first public proposal for such conference; but Mair's had been the clear vision and the moving spirit from the beginning. His labours in connexion with the enlargement of the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh (1893–1894) are commemorated on a tablet in the vestibule, and were further acknowledged by the presentation of his portrait, painted by Sir George Reid, in 1896.
Of Mair's other writings the more important are: Speaking (1900), The Truth about the Scottish Churches (1891), Jurisdiction in Matters Ecclesiastical (1896), and My Life (1911).
[The Times, 28 January 1920; Scotsman, 19 November 1896 and 27 January 1920; Dr. W. Mair, My Life, 1911; personal knowledge.]