The Legacy of Mary Slessor Jeanette Hardage ixty-six-year-old Mary Mitchell Slessor lay dying in the work in one of the mills to help support the family. By the time Svillage of Use Ikot Oku, Nigeria. Feverish, weak, and she was eleven, Mary also went to work in the mill. Like many going in and out of consciousness, she prayed, "0 Abasi,sana mi others around them, the Slessors lived in the slums and knew the yak" (0God,let mego). Herprayerwas granted justbeforedawn meaning of hunger. Before long, Mary's father and both her on January 13, 1915. The woman known as eka kpukpru owo brothers died, leaving behind only Mary, her mother, and two (everybody's mother) had lived nearly forty years in Nigeria, but sisters. herdeathwasnoted around the world, and herinfluence lives on today. Practical Training How did Mary Slessor, a petite redhead from the slums of Dundee, Scotland, become a role model for others, even today? David Livingstone, missionary hero of the day, had urged fellow How did she come to wield such influence in the land known to Christians not to let die the fire of opening Africa to Christianity. her compatriots as the white man's grave? How did she fit into Slessor responded to this call. She read everything she could lay theBritishEmpire'splanto"civilize" Nigeria?A studyof SIessor's hands on, including the works of Milton,Carlyle, and others. She life reveals certain factors leading to a missionary fervor, com­ becameaneagerstudentof the Bible andwasconvinced shemust bined with a large measure of down-to-earth common sense. give herself to God's service. As later years were to show, once Through the trying circumstances of her youth, she learned to she felt certain of God's leading on any matter, nothing kept her face and overcome difficult situations in ways that often chal­ from following through. This admirable characteristic some­ lenged the mission methods and attitudes of her era. times put her at odds with coworkers and the mission board. Slessor's life, apart from twelve-hour workdays, revolved The Mission at Calabar around the church. As a teenager, she began teaching Sunday school and working with a youth club. On Saturdays she often In 1841 Hope Masterton Waddell, an Irish clergyman serving led her group on outings-running races with them, climbing with the Scottish Presbyterian mission in Jamaica, received a trees, hiking up her skirts when necessary. Her usually docile copyof Sir T. FowellBuxton'sbookTheSlaveTrade andIts Remedy. attitude gave way to exasperation whenshe learned that some of The author proclaimed that God would inspire men from the the church elders disapproved of such behavior. West Indies to return to their African homeland with the Gospel Her notes for a lesson she taught at Wishart Church in 1874 of Jesus Christ. Buxton's book spurred Waddell to urge col­ contain an urgent plea which is also an unwitting foretelling of leagues and congregants to seek to establish a mission in Africa. her own life story. Slaves had been freed in Jamaica in 1833, and Waddell and other missionaries had a strong ministry among the people there. Thank God! For such men & women here & everywhere, who in The synod in Jamaica sentWaddell as their representative to the face of scorn, & persecution ... dare to stand firmly & fearlessly the Foreign Mission Board in Edinburgh to plead for permission for their Master. Their commissionis todaywhat it was yesterday. to go to Calabar, near the southeastern coast of present-day 'Go ye into all the world, & preach the Gospel to every creature.' ... not the nice easy places only, but the dark places, the distant Nigeria. At first the society denied the request, but the persis­ places ... to the low as well as the high, the poor as well as the rich, tence of the Jamaican group paid off, and in 1846 the first the ignorant as well as the learned, the degraded as well as the contingent of missionaries finally reached Calabar. The mission refined, to those whowill mockas wellas to those whowillreceive saw some successes, but for years mission stations remained for us, to those who will hate as well as to those who will love us.' the most part clustered around the coastal villages near the mouths of the Cross and Calabar Rivers. She answered her own challenge to go when news reached By the time of Mary's birth in 1848, her mother (alsoMary Britain of Livingstone's death in 1874. Slessor), like hundreds of other Scottish Presbyterians, eagerly The ForeignMissionBoard agreed to sendSlessorto Calabar read each issue of the MissionaryRecord. TheUnited Presbyterian as a teacher upon completion of a three-month training course in Church (later United Free Church of Scotland) published this Edinburgh. She wrote in later years that the training would have monthly magazine to inform members of missionary comings been more beneficial hadit been "morepractical."? Whatever the and goings, progress, problems, and needs. The exploits of the training, it surely did not include house-building and concrete­ famous missionary explorer David Livingstone, as well as those making, chores she found herself involved in through the years. serving in Calabar and elsewhere, enthralled Mrs. SIessor, and At the same time Slessor continued to be a serious student and she communicated her enthusiasm for missions to her children. teacher of the Bible in Africa. She came to exemplify the truth set Mary's childhood had a dark side in the person of her forth by missions historian Andrew Walls that missionaries "set alcoholic father, Robert. In 1859 he moved the family from themselves to intellectual effort and acquired learning skills far Aberdeen to Dundee, hoping for a change. He worked briefly as beyond anything which would have been required of them in a shoemaker,thenin oneof thecity'stextilemills,buthe soonwas their ordinary run of life.'? laid off and then reverted to his old lifestyle. Mary's mother was already a skilled weaver and began Arrival at Calabar Slessor embarked for Calabar on August 6, 1876, and in Septem­ Jeanette Hardage is a freelance South Carolina writer with a longstanding ber set foot on African soil at Duke Town, forty miles inland up interest in Christian mission. Sheis working ona biography ofMary Slessor. the Calabar River estuary. Neither the oppressive tropical 178 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH climate nor the innu merable insects or wild animals could da mpe n her high hopes, wonder, and enthus i­ asm. She ad mired her teach er, lon gtime m issionary Mrs. Euphe mia Su therland, whom she du tifu lly fol­ lowed around as she learned th e business of being a "fema le age nt"-teaching, dispensing medicati ons, and mak ing th e rou nds of the women's yards surround ing Duke Town, mission headquarters in th e greater Cala­ bar region. Slessor eagerly followed advice given her to make the study of th e Efik lan guage her highest priority. She wa s such an ap t student of the language th at she was described by Africa ns as having an Efik mouth. During her firs t yea rs in Calabar Slessor began to understand th e religiou s beliefs of th e people, their social relationsh ips, their law s and customs (especially as represented by the governing Ekp e frat ernity), and th e problem s presented by polygamy, slavery, and drunkenness. She abho rred the practices of twin-mur­ der and the sac rifice of wives and slaves upon th e death of a chief. She began to make eleva ting the status of Man) Slessor in Scotland, 1898, w ith four adopted child ren, 16 year women one of her prior ities. Her eccentricities and old Jani e (Jean), Mary (5), A lice (3), and Maggie (16 months). headstrong personality became m ore ev ident as she Photograph by A. R. Edwards. Courtesy of McManus Gallerie s, broke tradition by sheddi ng her Victorian petticoats Dundee City Council Leisure and Arts, Dundee, Scotland. and climbing trees. She marched bareheaded and bar e­ foot th rou gh th e jung le an d d eclin ed to filter her wa ter - ha bits In 1883 Slessor returned to Scotland, sick ag ain, wi th bab y she maintained for yea rs. Janie in tow. The child was a great attraction in the churches and Within three years Slessor, no w thirty yea rs old, was ill and homes visited . The furl ough extended to tw o and a half yea rs, homesick. Frequent attac ks of feve r sid elined her, and she suf­ with one d elay after ano ther. Fina lly, Siess or left her mother and fered from th e harmattan, the dusty Saharan wind th at blew you nger sister in the care of a friend and returned to Ca labar in during th e dry season and cons ume d her ene rgy.She we nt home 1885, thi s time to Creek Town, across th e river and farther inl and to Scotland, but after a stay of a little over a yea r, she returned to from Duke Town. Calaba r. She served wi th other missiona ries in Creek Town but Slessor had begged to go to a different station and was longed to move on to new territory. She had told the Ca labar delighted to find she was assigned to Old Town, a few mil es up Mission Commi ttee of her d esire to go to th e people of Okoyong the Ca labar River.