Researching John Skinner

Skinner was born in Shore Street, Inver, near Tain to Walter C. Skinner, a tailor's cutter, and Mary Skinner née Kendrick. He was educated at Queen's Park Higher Grade School and Allan Glen's School in the city.

Skinner was an acting Company Sergeant Major in the 1st Battalion, The King's Own Scottish Borderers, British Army, when he became the recipient of the Victoria Cross for his actions during the Battle of Passchendaele on 18 August 1917 at Wijdendrift, Belgium.

His citation reads:

C.S.M Skinner received the medal from King George V at an investiture in Buckingham Palace on 26 September 1917. Following the investiture he was granted the customary fourteen days' leave after which he was posted to the Reserve Battalion in Edinburgh. A few days later, however, he was seen in the line, having risked a court-martial to return to his men.

He was killed in action at Vlamertinghe, Belgium, on 17 March 1918, when trying to rescue a wounded man and was buried at Vlamertinghe New British Cemetery, Belgium, west of Ypres, in Plot XVI, Row H, Grave 15. His pallbearers were six fellow-VCs with three others in attendance.

His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Regimental Museum of The Kings Own Scottish Borderers, in Berwick Barracks, Berwick upon Tweed, Northumberland, England.

Born in Balfour, Aberdeenshire, he was a son of a schoolmaster at Birse, and was educated at Marischal College.

Brought up as a Presbyterian, he became an Episcopalian and ministered to a congregation at Longside, near Peterhead, for 65 years. He wrote The Ecclesiastical History of Scotland from the Episcopal point of view, and several songs of which The Reel of Tullochgorum and The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn are the best known, and he also rendered some of the Psalms into Latin. He kept up a rhyming correspondence with Robert Burns.

He died at the home of his son, John Skinner, Bishop Coadjutor of Aberdeen on 16 June 1807.

Skinner's homesite in Hartford was originally (in 1639) "on the west side of Main St., a little below the present [at 1886] corner of Pearl St." However, Skinner traded this lot with Richard Olmsted for a lot on the highway (later Trumbull St.).

Skinner was involved with various aspects of the War of 1812. One involved a rescue mission with Francis Scott Key to retrieve a doctor being held as a prisoner by the British. Key wrote a poem about a part of the mission and Skinner had his poem published. This eventually lead to the poem becoming the American national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner".

Skinner made his first-class debut for Sussex against Kent in 1873. Over the next decade he played infrequently for Sussex, making nine further first-class appearances, the last of which came against Hampshire in 1882. In his ten first-class matches, he scored 41 runs at an average of 2.56, with a high score of 10. With the ball, he took 16 wickets at a bowling average of 29.93, with best figures of 4/95.

Outside of cricket he worked as a tailor, but also coached cricket at Marlborough College. At the time of the 1881 census, he was living at the Tailor's Shop in Steyning, with his father Richard, then aged 60 and his mother Jane, then aged 64. His unmarried brothers Ernest and Harry, as well as his unmarried sister Fanny were also living there. He died at the town of his birth on 17 February 1926.