John Burtt was born about the year 1790, at Knockmarloch, in the parish
of Riccarton, and county of Ayr. With a limited school education, he was
apprenticed to a weaver in Kilmarnock; but at the loom he much improved
himself in general scholarship, especially in classical learning. In his
sixteenth year he was decoyed into a ship of war at Greenock, and
compelled to serve on board. Effecting his escape, after an arduous
servitude of five years, he resumed the loom at Kilmarnock. He
subsequently taught an adventure school, first in Kilmarnock, and
afterwards at Paisley. The irksome labours of sea-faring life he had
sought to relieve by the composition of verses; and these in 1816 he
published, under the title of "Horæ Poeticæ; or, the Recreations of a
Leisure Hour." In 1817 he emigrated to the United States, where his
career has been prosperous. Having studied theology at Princeton
College, New Jersey, he became a licentiate of the Presbyterian Church,
and was appointed to a ministerial charge at Salem. In 1831 he removed
to Philadelphia, where he edited a periodical entitled the
_Presbyterian_. Admitted in 1833 to a Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati,
he there edited the _Standard_, a religious newspaper. In August 1835,
he was promoted to a chair in the Theological Seminary of that place.