Orkney Missionary Pioneer

From January 1965

Margaret Graham of Calabar

Close to the grave of Mary Slessor in Calabar is buried another pioneer missionary of the same stamp.

Margaret Graham was born in Orphir, Orkney, in 1860, and trained as a nurse, probably in Aberdeen. When she heard Mary Slessor tell of the desperate need of the people in Calabar she offered herself as a missionary.

Before her arrival there was no missionary nursing sister: there was no hospital. For two years she worked in the most primitive conditions, combating fear, ignorance, superstition. When the Government built hospitals for both Europeans and Africans she was asked to serve there. Her work called for courage and stamina. At one time she was on the staff of a military expedition against notorious slave-traders. From 1895 to 1922 she laboured in a climate fatal to most white people, at a job which called on the utmost reserves of endurance and skill. She never lost sight of her missionary vocation, and every morning at the dispensary began with worship and the Spreading of the Gospel.

Memorial Plaque

Her retirement from Government service was followed by a year’s furlough and then, at the age of sixty-three, she returned to Arochuka as an honorary missionary, living on her pension, and ran a dispensary there for ten years.

In the church at Arochuka is a stained-glass window showing Margaret Graham surrounded by many of the people she tended. And in St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, a memorial plaque was recently unveiled. A letter from the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria was read at this service of commemoration, conveying thanks and good wishes to ‘our friends in Orkney’ and concluding:

“We ask you to pray, as we shall, that this simple but continuing fellowship between our churches will inspire some of your young folk to follow Miss Graham’s steps, and to come out to serve God in His Church in Nigeria”.

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