In this week’s Know Your News’, we turn the clock all the way back to the humble beginnings of the Weekly News in April 1877 and edition number 2 of our paper.

An ex-slave who had inspired one of the biggest selling novels of the 19th century addressed a very large audience in the Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay Parish Church and gave a fascinating talk.

In turn himself, he also praised the passion and warmth of the Scots, and revealed that he was a fan of Robert Burns’ poetry, and he himself escaped slavery thanks to the intervention of a Scot.

Josiah Henson was well known around the world as it was his life story which was used as the inspiration for the second biggest selling novel of the 19th century behind the bible - “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Stowe, a Connecticut-born preacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, and she focused the novel on Josiah’s character.

The Rev. Mr Kerr introduced the lecturer. Josiah said that there had been so much said, written, thought and felt about him around the world. It was his misfortune, Josiah told the Skelmorlie audience, to be born a slave and such he remained for 42 years.

Born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Ontario, Canada in 1830, and founded a settlement and labourer’s school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Kent County. At the time of his arrival, Ontario was known as the Province of Upper Canada (U.C.), becoming the Province of Canada in 1841, then Ontario in 1867, all within Henson’s lifetime there.

The old man referred to ‘that immortal Scotsman Robert Burns’ when he recalled the verses “The rank is but the guinea stamp, the man’s the gow’d for a’that.” Yes, he said, it didn’t matter whether you were white, black or red, and praised Burns for his view on all men.

The ‘News’ reported: “There is a graphic, yet simple force about his narration of the incidents of his eventful life which is very captivating.”