Buchan, Elspeth (1738–1791)

Scottish founder of a religious sect known as the Buchanites. Name variations: Elspeth Simpson. Born Elspeth Simpson near Banff, Scotland, in 1738; died near Dumfries, Scotland, in 1791; daughter of John Simpson (an innkeeper near Banff); married Robert Buchan (a potter of Greenock); children.

Separated from her husband Robert Buchan, a potter in Greenock, Elspeth Buchan settled with her children in Glasgow in 1781. In 1783, deeply impressed by a sermon preached by Hugh White, minister of the Relief Church at Irvine, she moved there and persuaded White and others that she was a saint with a special mission. She convinced White that she was the woman described in Revelations xii in whom the light of God was restored to men, and that God was the son she had brought forth. White was condemned by the presbytery, and in 1784 the magistrates expelled White, Buchan, and her Buchanite sect, which ultimately numbered 46 disciples. The group settled on a communal farm, known as New Cample, which consisted of one room and a loft in Closeburn, Dumfriesshire, where they lived on funds provided by the richer members. Claiming prophetic inspiration, Elspeth Buchan maintained that she could bestow the spirit of the Holy Ghost into her followers by breathing on them; she also convinced them that the millennium was near. They would not die, however, only be transposed. In a letter dated August 1784, the poet Robert Burns describes the sect as idle and immoral. Elspeth Buchan published a Divine Dictionary (1785) with White, who was unable to keep the sect together after Buchan's death in 1791.