“…is entitled to a place in the front ranks of the heroines of history, and if goodness be counted an essential element of true greatness, if eminence be reckoned by love and self-sacrifice, by years of endurance and suffering, by a life of sustained heroism and purest devotion, it will be found difficult, if not impossible, to name her equal.” —J.H. Morrison
Born near Aberdeen, Scotland in 1848, in the midst of the industrial revolution, Mary’s family lived on the financial edge due to her alcoholic father, a shoemaker. At eleven the “red-haired girl with bright blue eyes,” went to work in the jute mills of Dundee, and by the age of fourteen, her father and two brothers were dead from pneumonia, leaving only Mary and her mother to work and take care of two younger sisters. Due to her mother’s devoted Christian witness and their faithfulness in attending worship in the Wishart United Presbyterian Church (later known as United Free Church of Scotland), Mary also became a devout believer and avid Bible reader. At the age of twenty seven, after hearing of the death of the missionary David Livingstone, Mary determined to become a missionary in Africa.