Wylie Blue was born Alexander Wylie Blue in Campbeltown, Argyle on 11 May, 1869. His father was William, a master baker and his mother Mary Wylie. He was one of at least six siblings. He attended Glasgow University and the United Presbyterian Theological College in Edinburgh. 1901 he was Minister in the United Free Church in Glasgow’s Blythswood. In 1902 he married Dora Gow, she was the daughter of a Chemist in Cupar Angus and, born in 1882, some years younger than him.
He was in Sunderland for a period where at least two of his daughters were born. In Sunderland he founded the Sunderland Guild of Help in 1907 following a sermon he preached stressing the plight of the poor in the area and making a special plea “that measures might be taken by voluntary effort to overcome the evils and mitigate the distress”
In 1916 he moved to Belfast, to the post of Minister of May Street Presbyterian Church. A couple of years later he served in France with the YMCA. In Augst 1918 the Cambeltown Courier announced that he had returned to Belfast, adding ‘to see him in his war paint, with steel hat. gas box etc, is to see a man, but to hear him is to hear the voice of the Lord.’ May Street Presbyterian is in Belfast City Centre and in the early 20th century was a popular, fashionable. well-attended Church. Wylie was an eloquent and admired preacher who, as his career progressed, toured North America and Australia. He was politically active on the Unionist side of the complex politics of Ireland in the early 20th century, in 1919-20 he visited the United States and Canada as a member of the Ulster Delegation in opposition to Home Rule. He was an intellectual and literate man with a deep interest in Campbeltown local history and Scottish dialect. He was the author of at least one novel, The Quay Head Tryst (1917). In 1946 he published Fossicker’s Fare, described as ‘ a pastor’s largely humorous account of travels throughout the British Empire.’
He had five daughters Mabel Elizabeth, Annie Scott, Mary Wylie, Ailsa, and Dora. Mabel married a Northern Ireland clergyman The Rev. Dr. Robert John Laughlin and eventually settled in the USA. She died in Des Moines in 2008. At least two of his other daughters married. Wylie Blue stayed in Northern Ireland until his death at his home at 18 Cyprus Avenue, Belfast in 1956. His wife died on 16 March 1957 at the same address.
