Appendix D: Notes on Sources and Method

“it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order … that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.”

— Luke 1:3-4, ASV

This appendix explains where the story told in this book comes from, how the sources were weighed, and which popular claims have been corrected. It is written for readers who want to check the story for themselves, and for anyone who will retell it.

Livingstone’s Biography

The main source for Mary Slessor’s life is W. P. Livingstone, Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916). It is now in the public domain. Livingstone had access to a large collection of her letters, and much of his book consists of quotations from them, together with the memories of missionaries, officials, and friends. Almost all the words of Mary Slessor quoted in this book come from Livingstone.

Livingstone was an admirer, writing for the Church that had sent her, and the book has the faults that implies. He sometimes hints that she was more than human. He defends the Church’s committees and the colonial government whenever they are criticised. He gives no account of the violence of the Aro Expedition. His descriptions of African peoples are shaped by the racial theories of his time. This book has not repeated that language except where it was necessary to show how she or her contemporaries thought.

But Livingstone was also candid in ways later popular books were not. He kept her doubts and depressions, her temper and her physical force, her use of laudanum and sleeping draughts, her quarrels with the Church, her dependence on the government, and her failures. Much of the hard material in this book is his. His dates are occasionally wrong. Two are corrected here:

Saturday, September 11. Her arrival is given as “Saturday, September 11” 1876, but 11 September 1876 was a Monday.

1893 for about 1895. Mary Kingsley’s visit is dated 1893. Kingsley’s own account, which speaks of Slessor having been eighteen years in Calabar, points to her second voyage, about 1895.

A caution for anyone checking these pages against the widely used Project Gutenberg e-text of Livingstone: it contains transcription errors that are not in the printed book. It gives “1848” for the chiefs’ invitation (the book has 1843), “April 1888” for her return home with Janie (1883), “June 1908” for her move to Itu (1903), and “18th January” in the government Gazette notice of her death (the book has 13th). Dates in this biography have been checked against a scan of the 1916 edition.

Other Early Sources

Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (1897), contains the fullest independent eyewitness account of Slessor at Okoyong, including the arrival of Iye and her twins, and Kingsley’s assessment of her work. The Missionary Record of the United Presbyterian Church and its successors printed extracts from her letters and reports. Two later popular books were read for this biography, A. J. Bueltmann’s White Queen of the Cannibals and the chapter on Slessor in Mary Rosetta Parkman’s Heroines of Service (1917). Both depend on Livingstone and add invented dialogue, names, and scenes. They have not been used as sources of fact.

Records and Modern Scholarship

Scottish parish and civil registers and census returns, as quoted by family historians, have been used to correct the details of her family. The records of the Congregational church at Topsham, and the 1891 census, document her years in Devon.

This book has drawn, for facts and interpretation, on the modern scholarly literature, especially Jeanette Hardage, Mary Slessor, Everybody’s Mother: The Era and Impact of a Victorian Missionary (2008); Carol Christian and Gladys Plummer, God and One Redhead: Mary Slessor of Calabar (1970), which drew on the memories of her adopted son Daniel; James Buchan, The Expendable Mary Slessor (1980); Elizabeth Robertson, Mary Slessor: The Barefoot Missionary (2001); Esther Breitenbach, “The Making of a Missionary Icon: Mary Slessor as ‘Heroine of Empire’,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies (2017); Elijah Obinna, “Bridging the Divide: The Legacies of Mary Slessor, ‘Queen’ of Calabar, Nigeria,” Studies in World Christianity (2011); and the entry on Slessor in the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, which quotes the Nigerian church historian Ogbu Kalu. These modern works remain in copyright, and this book has not reproduced them.

Several details of her adopted children’s lives are not in Livingstone and come from these later works and from Sally Ayres’s 2013 study of Janie for the Telling Our Stories project in Exeter: Janie’s Efik name, Atim Eso, and her death in 1918; Daniel Slessor’s 1958 reminiscences and his long life; and the fragments known about Whitie and Asuquo. They have been used with that caution.

Corrections to the Popular Story

Her family. Her mother bore eleven children, not seven. Her father was born in Aberdeen, not Buchan. Her brothers did not die of pneumonia: Robert died of croup, William of tuberculosis, and John in New Zealand.

The killing of twins. Mary Slessor did not end the killing of twins in Nigeria. The Efik rulers of Calabar, with British consuls, had banned it from 1849, and missionaries had rescued twins from 1852. The practice survived in the interior long after her death. Her contribution was to protect twins and their mothers in districts the old agreements did not reach, over decades.

“White Queen.” “The White Queen of Okoyong” was the title of a Scottish book for children, not a name used by the people. They called her Ma, and later Eka kpukpru owo, “Everybody’s Mother.”

Vice-consul. Most modern accounts say she was made vice-consul for Okoyong in 1892. Livingstone describes her position more cautiously as “akin to that of a consular agent.” She was unpaid.

First woman magistrate. The claim that she was the first woman magistrate in the British Empire has not been established.

Paid for her court work. One popular book says the government paid her. She refused all payment.

Never married. The idea that she never married because she was “married to Africa” is interpretation. She was engaged to Charles Morrison, and the engagement ended because the Church would not transfer him to Okoyong, she would not leave it, and his health failed.

Isolation by choice. Her colleagues believed she lived alone on local food by preference. Livingstone shows that she did so at first because she was sending most of her salary home, and was too proud to say so.

The lead-weight gang. The story of the young man who swung a lead weight at her head in Dundee comes from Livingstone alone, without a named witness. Later books added names and details. This book tells it as a remembered story.

Legends. A panther carrying a baby from her tent, and other dramatic scenes and names found in popular books, have no source.

Quotations

“Why should I fear? I am on a Royal Mission.” This saying, often quoted as hers, is not in Livingstone or any source from her lifetime, and the earliest printings found are devotional books of the 2000s. It should not be quoted as hers.

“God and one are always a majority.” Modern biographers report that she wrote these words in one of her Bibles. The saying was not her own; it was an older proverb, in print by the 1860s.

“Christ sent me to preach, not to baptize.” This wording is Paul’s (1 Corinthians 1:17). Livingstone does record her as saying, “Christ sent me to preach the Gospel, and He will look after results.”

“Failed, failed.” This comes from a 1908 newspaper article by a visiting writer. Livingstone says Mary was deliberately “mystifying” the writer, and her own account of the evening suggests a joke. It should not be quoted as her considered verdict on her life.

Dates Still Uncertain

Several dates remain uncertain or disputed: the date of her brother John’s emigration and death; the date of Janie’s marriage (21 or 12 December 1899); the date of her appointment in Okoyong; the year of Mary Kingsley’s visit; and whether she resigned from the Ikot Obong court in November 1909 or a year later. The later lives of several of her adopted children, and of Charles Morrison, are not well documented.

Scripture

All Scripture quotations are from the American Standard Version of 1901, in the public domain, checked against its published text. Where Mary Slessor herself quoted the King James Version, her words are given as she wrote them.