Murray College - History

History

Government Murray College Sialkot was established as Scotch Mission College by Scottish missionaries belonging to the Church of Scotland Mission in 1889. The Church of Scotland came to Sialkot (then Part of British India) in January 1857 when the first Scottish missionary, Reverend Thomas Hunter, came to live with his wife, Jane Scott, and baby son near the Brigade Parade Ground, facing the Trinity Church (whose first stone was laid on March 1, 1852). The church was consecrated by the Bishop of Madras on January 30, 1857. Sialkot at that time was in the diocese of Calcutta in British India. Thomas Hunter, his wife and baby son were murdered in Sialkot during the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

The Scottish missionaries who established Scotch Mission College were born and lived in the comparative comfort of Scotland, deeply moral and ordained to the Christian ministry, each one of them educated in one of the five ancient universities of their country. They worked largely without recompense to educate people of a town very different from theirs. In 1972, the government of Pakistan dismissed the Scottish missionaries and nationalized the institution.What is now called Govt. Murray College, Sialkot and takes pride in being the alma mater of the great poet-philosopher of the East, had a very modest beginning. It was initially started in 1868 as Scotch Mission High School, situated in Kanak Mandi, Sialkot, but was in 1889 up-graded to the status of an Intermediate College at the request of Punjab Govt.