The Buchanites were the late 18th-century followers of Elspeth Buchan, a Scottish woman who claimed to be one of the figures named in the Book of Revelation.
History
In 1783, Mrs Buchan, in her late 40s and the daughter of an inn owner, declared herself to be a prophet and a biblical figure in her own right, and claimed to be immortal and able to give immortality to her followers by breathing on them. She gathered a group of followers in Irvine (North Ayrshire), where they are reputed to have practised behaviour that contravened social norms as they prepared to ascend en bloc at short notice to Heaven. They broke away from the Relief Church when Hugh White, minister at Irvine, declared Elspeth Buchan to be a special saint identified with the woman described in Revelation 12.
As with many controversial sects in various times and places, they were rumoured by a disapproving society to practise "a community of wives" or "orgies in the woods"; but there is no conclusive proof that they did either.
They were expelled from Irvine, residents even threatening to drown them in the towns Scott's Loch. Eventually they made their way to Closeburn (north of Dumfries) in 1784. They were expelled from Dumfriesshire in 1787 and then settled in the Crocketford area (Stewartry of Kirkcudbright).
Mrs Buchan died of natural causes in 1791, disproving her claim to immortality.
The end of the Buchanite saga came in 1846, when the last "adherent", Andrew Innes, died. Innes, who lived in the (still existing) Buchanite last abode, "Newhouse", Crocketford, had expected a "resurrection" of the mummified body of Mother Buchan on March 29, 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death. He was disappointed and died at "Newhouse" in 1846 - a death which coincided with the discovery of Mother Buchan's hidden mummified body. Many Buchanites were buried (or reburied) in a graveyard next to the north-west wall of "Newhouse", in the expectation that they would "ascend" eventually with "Lucky" Buchan.