JOHN GIBSON PATON
1824 - 1907
John Gibson Paton: Presbyterian
missionary; born at Kirkmahoe (9 miles north
of Dumfries), Scotland, May 24, 1824; died
at Canterbury, Victoria, Australia, January
28, 1907. He was educated at the University
of Glasgow, the divinity hall of the Reformed
Presbyterian Church, and the Andersonian medical
university, all in Glasgow, where he was a
city missionary from 1847 till 1857. He was
licensed December 1, 1857, and ordained a
missionary to the New Hebrides March 23, 1858,
and left Glasgow with his wife Mary Ann Robson
on April 16. At Melbourne they transhipped
to Aneityum where they landed August 30. He
began his labors on the island of Tanna November
5, 1858. There, on February 12, 1859, his
wife died in child-bed, and her infant son,
March 20. The natives proved to be intractable
and he was finally driven away by their savage
attacks on February 4, 1862.
He then began those tours
in behalf of New Hebrides mission work which
were ultimately to make him known throughout
all the English-speaking world. He went first
to the Presbyterian churches of Australia
and New Zealand. In 1864 he visited Scotland,
was elected moderator of the General Synod
of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, secured
seven missionaries for the New Hebrides, and
returned with his second wife, Margaret Whitecross.
He landed in Sydney January 17, 1865, made
another tour of the churches, and visited
the New Hebrides. In November, 1866, he became
a missionary on one of the islands, Aniwa.
He held his first communion there October
24, 1869, and ultimately saw all the natives
nominal Christians. In March, 1873, he visited
the Australasian colonies to raise money;
returned to Aniwa the next year, but in 1883
laid before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church of Victoria the necessities of the
New Hebrides mission and was sent by it in
1884 to Great Britain to raise the money.
He returned with the funds desired early the
next year, visited Aniwa, but then took up
his missionary tours again through Australasia
between 1886 (when he was elected moderator
of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria) and
1892, then through the United States and Canada,
and so around the world, returning to Victoria
in 1894.
In 1897 he was in Melbourne
carrying through the press the New Testament
in the Aniwan language. In 1899 he was in
Aniwa. In 1900 he attended the Ecumenical
Missionary Conference in New York City, and
was hailed as a great missionary hero. In
1901 he was back in Australia. His health
had begun to fail, his wife was also ailing,
and on May 16, 1905, she died. In 1904 he
issued his translation into Aniwan of the
Acts of the Apostles and began proofreading
on that of Genesis.
He was a man of picturesque
appearance and bore his testimony with great
power. He described himself as theologically
"a Presbyterian Evangelical Calvinist
of the old Covenanter Reformed Church of Scotland."
He wrote many pamphlets on missionary topics,
and also to expose the evils of the Kanaka
labor traffic, as well as opposing the French
annexation of the New Hebrides in favor of
British occupation. But the book which made
him famous was his autobiography, whose sale
was enormous on the strength of his perils
on Tanna and Aniwa. The book owed much to
the literary skill of his brother, Rev. James
Paton, D. D. (who died in Glasgow December
21, 1906), and appeared in three parts, John
G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides.
An Autobiography. Edited by his Brother (New
York, 1st part, 1889, 2nd part 1890; parts
three and four, carrying the story from 1885
till his death, appeared bound up with the
other parts, 1907).
