Enlightened Minister

Irish Immigrant.

The Reverend Dr. Francis Alison arrived in Pennsylvania in 1735 in the company of other oppressed Irish Presbyterians seeking religious and political freedom. He brought with him a deep commitment to the precepts and pedagogy of the Scots-Irish Enlightenment and to the desirability of religious diversity. Alison was born in Leek, in northern Ireland, in 1705, the son of a weaver. He was educated in a private academy, probably in Dublin under the Reverend Francis Hutcheson, the founder of the Scots-Irish Enlightenment. He earned his master of arts degree in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh in 1733 and started divinity studies under Hutcheson at the University of Glasgow. That institution later awarded Alison a doctor of divinity degree, an unprecedented honor for a colonist. He returned to Ireland, was licensed, and sailed for Pennsylvania. He settled in as minister to the New London...