George Washington Sprott

George Washington Sprott (6 March, 1829 – 27 October, 1909) was Scottish minister and liturgical scholar, known as an advocate of reform of the services of the Church of Scotland, and of its reunion with the Free Church of Scotland.

Born at Musquodoboit, Nova Scotia, on 6 March 1829, he was the eldest of five children of John Sprott, Presbyterian minister there, by his third wife, Jane Neilson. Both his parents came from Wigtownshire. After early education in the colony, Sprott entered Glasgow College in 1845, where one of his fellow students was Henry Campbell-Bannerman who consulted him about studying for the ministry.

Sprott graduated B.A. in 1849. He had introductions to the families of Norman Macleod the younger, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd, and Laurence Lockhart, brother of John Gibson Lockhart.

His father approved of his son's decision to join the Church of Scotland, and, ordained in 1852 by the presbytery of Dunoon, Sprott returned to Nova Scotia, to act as assistant at St. Matthew's, Halifax. There he served also as chaplain to the 72nd Highlanders, alter posted to the Crimea. After visits to Newfoundland and the United States, he returned to Scotland in 1856, and having served short periods as assistant minister at Greenock and Dumfries, he was gazetted to a chaplaincy to the Scottish troops at Kandy, and went out to Ceylon in 1857, where he was for seven years.

In 1865 Sprott left Ceylon and acted for a time as chaplain to the Scottish troops at Portsmouth.

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