Armour of Ballymoney: Presbyterian Minister, Liberal Home Ruler and Thrawn Ulster-Scot

Revd John Brown Armour was born on a farm at Lisboy, a townland near Ballymoney, in January 1841.  The Route (the area around Ballymoney) was strongly Presbyterian and culturally Ulster Scots. Politically, the district had a radical tradition going back to the United Irishmen in the 1790s. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries The Route would emerge as a hotbed of Tenant Right agitation.

Armour was educated locally, and then at Royal Belfast Academical Institution (better known as "Inst"), and the Queen's Colleges at Belfast and Cork. Armour claimed that he gained "a fuller understanding of his Catholic fellow countrymen" by his residence in Cork.

As a young man, Armour wished to be a lawyer and was highly critical of the motivation of most clerics. His decision to enter the Presbyterian ministry therefore may have been the result of parental influence. He became Minister of Second or Trinity Presbyterian Church in Ballymoney, his first and only congregation, in July 1869. 

Click here to download Plain text version