Horatius Bonar (19 December 180831 July 1889), a contemporary and acquaintance of Robert Murray M'cheyne was a Scottish churchman and poet. He is principally remembered as a prodigious hymnodist. Friends knew him as Horace Bonar. Licensed as a preacher, he did mission work in Leith for a time, and in November 1837 he settled at Kelso as minister of the new North Church founded in connection with Thomas Chalmers's scheme of church extension. He became exceedingly popular as a preacher, and was soon well known throughout Scotland. Life He was the son of James Bonar (1758–1821), Solicitor of Excise for Scotland, and his wife Marjory Pyott Maitland. The family lived in the Broughton district of Edinburgh. He came from a long line of ministers who served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland. One of eleven children, his brothers John James and Andrew Alexander were also ministers of the Free Church of Scotland. Horatius studied Divinity at University of Edinburgh and was ordained as a minister for the Church of Scotland in 1838 at the North Church in Kelso. In the Disruption of 1843 he left the established church and joined the Free Church of Scotland. In 1866 he moved to the newly built Chalmers Memorial Church in Edinburgh. He married Jane Catherine Lundie in 1843 and five of their (nine) young children died in succession. Towards the end of their lives, one of their surviving daughters was left a widow with five small children and she returned to live with her parents. In 1853, Bonar received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Aberdeen. He died at this home, 10 Palmerston Road in the Grange, 31 July 1889. They are buried together in the Canongate Kirkyard in the lair of Alexander Bonar (and his parents), near the bottom of the eastern extension. Family He married 16 August 1843, Jane Catherine (died 3rd December 1884), third daughter of Robert Lundie, minister of Kelso, and had issue — Mary Lundie, born 14 June 1844 (married 29 August 1876, George Theophilus Dodds, M'All Mission, Paris) James, born 25 May, died 19 July 1847 Marjory Emily Jane, born 29 August 1849, died 28 June 1850 Christian Cornelia, born 10 October 1852, died 17 July 1869 Lucy Jane, born 22 September 1854, died 20 August 1858 Eliza Maitland, born 10 September 1857 Horatius Ninian, sometime minister of United