The Story of John G. Paton; or, Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals (Dodo Press)

Reverend Dr. John Gibson Paton (1824-1907) was a Protestant missionary to the New Hebrides. He was a stocking manufacturer and later a colporteur. After some elementary education, John G., from the age of 12, started learning the trade of his stocking manufacturing father and, for fourteen hours a day, he manipulated one of the six "stocking frames" in his father's workshop. John G. and Mary Paton landed on the island of Tanna, in the southern part of the New Hebrides, in 1858 and built a small house at Port Resolution. From Aneityum, John G. went first to Australia, then to Scotland, to arouse greater interest in the work of the New Hebrides, to recruit new missionaries, and especially to raise a large sum of money for the building and upkeep of a sailing ship to assist the missionaries in the work of evangelizing the Islands. Later he raised a much larger sum with which to build a mission steamship. During this time in Scotland, in 1864, in Edinburgh, Scotland, John G. married Margaret (Maggie) Whitecross, a descendant of the so called "Whitecross Knights".