Hi, I'd write to the Vicar of the parish church...
There is no Vicar. The parish church is Church of Scotland, and the Church of Scotland has no vicars (or curates, rectors, bishops etc either, for that matter).
but I am a bit confused as you have called it the cathedral...
Because that is its name. It was founded in the 13th century and abandoned after the Reformation in the 16th century, except for continued use as the principal burial ground for the parish of Elgin.
so we need to establish what the full name of the church is... maybe googling for that town will do it?
It won't help. Elgin Cathedral is a very well-known landmark, and is the principal tourist attraction in Elgin.
Is it called St John's or St Mark's or what?
No. It is a ruin, as it happens, surrounded by gravestones.
And am I correct in thinking it is the Church of Scotland?
No. The reason it was abandoned at the Reformation was because of its Roman Catholic history.
or the Presbyterians or what?
The Church of Scotland is a presbyterian denomination. So presbyterian includes church of Scotland; they are not alternatives.
If you contacted the church you may be able to get a pic of the stone- and they may be able to advise you where for instance their parish papers are archived.
There is no point trying to contact the cathedral as it is a ruin and not in use. All the extant pre-1855 parish registers of the Church of Scotland are archived in the office of the Registrar General for Scotland in Edinburgh. (The pre-1855 burials in Elgin Cathedral churchyard are listed in the parish register and indexed in LIBINDX at
http://libindx.moray.gov.uk/mainmenu.asp, to which you have already been referred.) Later extant burial records are held by Moray Council.
In LIBINDX there are three separate references to your John Gow.
Reference No NM065900 shows that John Gow, city missionary, son of William Gow and Margaret Bain, was born on 22 April 1809, married to Jessie Ross on 13 November 1868, and died at Moss Street Church, Elgin on 23 April 1878. There were a death notice in the Moray Weekly News on 26 April 1878 and obituaries in the same paper and in the Forres Gazette on 23 April 1878. T
Another reference, NM065940, says that John Gow, aged 68, died on 23 April 1878. There were death notices in the Moray Weekly News and Forres Gazette.
The third reference, NM066049, which gives his date of birth as 2 May 1809, same parents, married to Margaret Monro on 12 December 1829 (don't pay any attention to variants of spelling of her surname; spelling was pretty fluid in the 19th century) and died on 23 April 1878 at the parish church, Moss Street, Elgin. Death notices as above.
The IGI at
www.familysearch.org has an 'extracted' entry listing the birth of John Gow as 22 April and his baptism as 2 May 1809.
It also lists the births of two children to John Gow and Jessie Ross: Robert Brander Gow, born 6 April 1870 and Jessie Georgina Gow born 4 March 1872, both in Elgin. You already have information below to tell you that Jessie Georgina died aged 5.
It also lists six children of John Gow and Margaret Munro, all baptised in Elgin:
William, 17 October 1830
David, 2 April 1837
Alexander, 7 July 1839
John, 27 August 1841
Jane, 21 April 1844
Adam Lind, 17 September 1848
A missionary is a sort of lay clergyman, who does good works including preaching, but is not ordained as a minister.
Now to the address where he died. There are two church buildings in Moss Street, neither of which is the parish church. That honour belongs to St Giles Kirk, in the High Street. The two are the former United Presbyterian Kirk, which was indeed a pub called High Spirits. Then it was a pub called Aspire, and now it is the Taj Mahal Indian restaurant (I had dinner there a few months ago). However another source says it was a kirk of the United Free Church. It was built in 1856-8. The other one is St Columba's Church, but as that was built in 1906 it is obviously not the right one.
So it seems that he died in the kirk which is now an Indian restaurant, which was not a Church of Scotland kirk. This may have been regarded as the parish kirk of the UP or UF congregation. Therefore he is likely to have been an adherent of this denomination, whichever it was, and not of the Church of Scotland.
I did try to find a picture of it but no luck.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/373824HTH
