Elizabeth Barr

Elizabeth Brown Barr (2 October 1905 – 23 June 1995) was a Scottish minister. She was the first woman to become a Presbyterian minister and the first female moderator of a general assembly of a Scottish church.

Life Barr was born in Dennistoun in Glasgow in 1905. Her parents were Elizabeth (née Brown) and James Barr. Her father was a minister who would lead the United Free Church of Scotland and become a member of parliament. During World War I her parents took in a refugee Belgian family. Barr became friends with the family and this friendship continued all her life. She attended Bellahouston Academy and then was a model student at the University of Glasgow where she was a keen member of the Student Christian Movement. She won academic prizes culminating in a first class masters degree in 1925.

In 1929 (another source says 1930 She was accepted as a candidate and she returned to Glasgow University to study the New Testament and to become a Bachelor of Divinity. She gained the church’s license to preach on 12 September 1933. In 1943, she moved parish to Clydebank, and in 1955, she led the parish of Glasgow Central. In 1966, she went to her final parish of Miller Memorial Church in Maryhill. She retired from there in 1975.

Barr died in the Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow.