Portraits of Courage – Mary Slessor

It is a Christian biography of Mary Slessor (1848–1915), the Scottish missionary who went from the jute and linen mills of Dundee to Calabar in 1876 and spent the rest of her life in what is now south-eastern Nigeria. It follows her from her poor childhood and conversion, through Okoyong, the Enyong Creek and Ikpe, to her death at Use in January 1915, drawing mainly on her own letters as printed by W. P. Livingstone in 1916.

Mary Slessor was a Scottish weaver who became a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church in Calabar. She learned Efik fluently, lived alone among the Okoyong people from 1888, protected twin babies and their mothers, presided over local courts, and opened new mission work along the Enyong Creek. The people called her Ma, and remembered her as Eka kpukpru owo, ‘Everybody’s Mother.’

No, and she never claimed to. The Efik rulers of Calabar, with British consuls, had banned the killing of twins from 1849, and missionaries had been rescuing twins since 1852. What she did was to carry that protection into the interior, take twins and their mothers into her own household for decades, and over time help families keep their children. Many of the babies she rescued died.

She was engaged in 1890 to Charles Morrison, a young teacher on the mission staff, on condition that he join her at Okoyong. The Church would not transfer him, she would not leave the people she had promised to serve, and his health then broke down. She wrote that her life had been ‘laid on His altar for that people long ago.’

Honestly. Her work coincided with the British conquest of southern Nigeria. She relied on consuls and officials, sat in a colonial court, and entered Aro country with the commander of the 1901–02 expedition. She also refused a government house, said that Europeans were ‘foreigners, and they own the country,’ and defended local people against officials. The book quotes historians who see her as both imperialist and liberator.

The book quotes her letters as Livingstone printed them — for example ‘Heaven is now nearer to me than Britain’ and ‘I am a poor exponent of faith.’ It notes that ‘Why should I fear? I am on a Royal Mission’ cannot be traced before the 2000s, that ‘God and one are always a majority’ was an older proverb she wrote in her Bible, and that the ‘Failed, failed’ quotation came from a newspaper article her friends thought was a leg-pull.

Each chapter opens with a passage from the American Standard Version (1901) that carries its theme — from ‘God chose the weak things of the world’ to ‘not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls’ — and further passages are woven through the story, including verses she marked and annotated in her own Bibles. Every quotation was checked against the ASV text.

At the beginning. The preface and introduction explain the sources and how the legend differs from the record; the chapters then follow her life in order, from Aberdeen and Dundee to Calabar, Okoyong, the Creek, and Ikpe. Appendix A gathers lessons from her life, Appendix B is a study guide for groups, Appendix C a chronology, and Appendix D a note on sources.