Cumnock - John McGeachan


In June 1688 a company of dragoons were escorting a prisoner, Rev David Houston who was a covenanting minister to Edinburgh for trial. They stopped for the night in Cumnock at the Blue Tower Inn. The next morning local convenanters laid a successful ambush at the Bello Path near Lugar, to free Houston. During this attack several dragoons were killed and a number of convenanters were wounded. One of them being John McGeachan a farmer from Meikle Auchingibbert who tried to make his way home but only managed to reach Stonepark. There his friends found him and decided that it would not be safe to take him home as he was known to the authorities for being a sympathiser of the covenanting cause but to try and hide him in a turf hut close to Stonepark, where he died three weeks later of his wounds and was buried there. He was the only fatality on the covenanters side.

To reach his memorial take the road from Logan to Craigens. In the middle of a small field on the left had side of the road stands the stone which is six feet tall and enclosed by a tall iron railing. The remains of an earlier stone can be seen in the enclosure.

Inscription on the front of the stone:
HERE LIES
JOHN McGEACHAN
WHO FOR HIS CONSTANT
ADHERENCE TO THE WORD OF
GOD,
PROSECUTING THE ENDS OF
OUR NATIONAL LEAGUE AND
COVENANT, AND APPEARING FOR
THE RESCUE OF THE
REV. DAVID HOUSTON,
ONE OF THE PERSECUTED
MINISTERS OF THE GOSPEL,
WAS SHOT AT BELLOW PATH BY
A PARTY OF BLOODY DRAGOONS,
XXVIII JULY 1688.
ERECTED ANNO 1728