probably baptised his early converts at the nearby Holy Water Cleuch (spring).

The village Oxton was called Ugston for several hundred years and appears under that name as late as the 1841 census. As with all Scottish parishes its inhabitants were ruled by a combination of the Kirk Session and the Heritors, the latter being local landowners who were jointly responsible for funding all projects in the parish such as repairs or extensions to the church, the manse, the school, the churchyard, the schoolmaster's house, and even the river