To: "Harry Conroy" info@scottishcatholicobserver.org.uk
Dear Harry, Thank you for your kind efforts to find a picture of Right Reverend William Mellon, Bishop of Galloway - 2nd February, 1952.
Happily I have been fortunate in obtaining a photograph of Bishop Mellon, from a friend, the Archivist of Paisley Diocese, Canon Canning. He had been given it by Mgr Kinsella, VG of Galloway, now retired in Nazareth House Cardonald.
I have also found, something which I think you mentioned, the Obituary - printed in the Catholic Directory for Scotland of 1953.
Abbot Raymond will be at the Consecration of the new Cathedral of St. Margaret's in Ayr on Fri 14th September. The above Obituary tells us something from, that the evolution of Galloway Diocesan territory and the transfer of its Cathedral from the South to other parts in the North has had quite a History.
No doubt Scottish Catholic Observer will have a full beam of spotlighting on the occasion.
My request had stemmed from a grand niece of the Bishop who came with her children to visit Nunraw. Her father, Ted Mellen, had tried his vocation as a monk at Nunraw from 1950. Before joining he had made the Holy Year Pilgrimage following Hilaire Belloc's "Path to Rome". In later year's he was surprised to find how much things had changed in the monastery (in the church). - His daughter had asked us to remember in our prayers "her father, Edward Farquharson Mellen, who was a novice at the Abbey in the 1950's. The 36th anniversary of his death, aged 46, is on 23rd August". Owing to a fire in the home in Edinburgh most of the family records perished. Some of the younger generation are now into restoring the Family Tree. Interesting in the
Biographical Note of the Obituary of Bishop Mellon is the reference the Coat of Arms. "His coat-of-arms described him well. It shows a hand grasping a pastoral staff, together with some sheep. The motto he chose was the one attributed to St. Ninian, the first Bishop of Galloway: Fides Petri in Sede Petri"," (The Faith of Peter in the See of Peter). See also the Galloway Icon of St. Ninian. Much water has flowed under the bridge since those days.In 1950 Bishop Mellon was at Nunraw to Ordain Fr. Stephen. He was functioning in Edinburgh in the inter-regnum between the Acrchbishops Andrew Joseph MacDonald and Gordon Joseph Gray.I look forward to seeing what SCO does for the profile of the present Bishop of Galloway. The memory of Bishop Mellon seems to have disappeared in the mists of Solway Firth. Perhaps we will hear more of him in the celebrations of the transferred Cathedra.
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I was pleasantly surprised to find a reference to Ted Mellon in the commentary about Bishop Mellon. Ted was my mother's first cousin, and she remembers his sad passing at such a young age, and the children he left. If I can assist in gathering any family tree information I would be happy to do so to whatever extent I can.
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