Joy McAlpine-Black, a Cambridge-based writer and teacher with a background in art history and creative writing, became intrigued by her great-great-great-grandmother, Ann Shaw, largely and inexplicably absent from the memoirs and studies of her husband William, Methodist missionary, pioneer and leader in South Africa. William and Ann went to South Africa with the 1820 settlers, founded mission stations, congregations and schools for blacks and whites. They interacted with African chiefs, colonial governors and officials and other missionaries, including the influential and controversial John Philip of the London Missionary Society (LMS). William returned to England after Ann’s death, remarried and had a second family, played a major part in Methodist affairs, and became President of the Methodist Conference.
Joy embarked on an archival quest in search of her foremother, combing the reports, periodicals and published memoirs of Methodist missionaries, archives and newspapers in England and South Africa, reading, often against the grain, to recover the experiences of women and children. Her breakthrough came when she discovered Ann’s funeral sermon in the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library and with it an uncatalogued (and previously unread?) eulogy written by her husband which drew selectively on the journals (now lost) that Ann kept over nearly half a century. More hopes were raised by the listing of an Anonymous Diary of a female Wesleyan in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. The dates fitted but it was not Ann. The diary did however lead to other sources. Gradually McAlpine-Black uncovered letters and poems written by Ann, portraits, photographs and memorials.
Local archives and newspapers allowed the reconstruction of Ann’s family background in the Lincolnshire Fens, lower class but with some wealthy connections, and her attraction to Methodism. She met William, an autodidact discharged soldier trying to make his way as a schoolteacher and preacher with missionary aspirations in 1815. He was younger by ten years and they faced the disapproval and suspicion of neighbours and church leaders; but they were soon married. In 1820 William was appointed, at the last minute, as minister to Wesleyans among the Settlers heading for the Cape. Ann and a baby daughter accompanied him. Their firstborn, a toddler son, was left behind in the care of his grandmother and aunt, a separation that caused Ann acute and lasting sorrow, evidenced in her poem ‘Mrs Shaw’s Farewell to England’.
Transcribed extracts from Ann’s journals, her letters home give the first detailed account of the 1820 settlers by a woman. They reveal much about relations with other missionaries and the missionary organization at home and especially the importance of female networks. They tell of life and activity at the new mission stations of Salem and Wesleyville and later Grahamstown, educational work with both settler and indigenous children, reaching [with the Gospel] the AmaXhosa beyond the frontier, learning the language and translation work, attitudes to nudity and polygamy, witchcraft, medicine and healing, and rainmaking. McAlpine-Black stresses the importance of women as missionaries (not just ‘wives’), evangelists, influencers and converts even if they were sidelined or ignored by the missionary press at home.
Chapter 15 on ‘Must-Have Books’ has some fascinating details of the books owned, loaned and sold by the Shaws, with insights into Methodist thinking and practice around health and medicine as well as some stomach-turning descriptions of disease and treatments and the frequent pregnancies, miscarriages and dangerous childbirths among the missionary wives in southern Africa.
Between 1833 and 1837 the Shaws were back in England, mostly in Leeds (Chapter 16). There was an uneasy reunion with their eldest child, Willam-Maw. The outbreak of the Sixth Xhosa War meant that William’s views were sought by home and colonial governments as well as the Aborigines Protection Society.
Back in South Africa, the work of church building, leadership and schooling went on, overshadowed but not halted by family concerns. The Shaws’ youngest son, Ben, went into business and the Grahamstown Yeomanry. His reckless behaviour implicated his parents in a disaster of debt, bankruptcy and misuse of mission funds and probably hastened Ann’s last illness and death. Ben’s disgrace was compounded by his responsibility in the ‘Umdumbi Affair’ when eighteen Mpondo were killed in murky circumstances. McAlpine-Black argues that the reason Ann (and her other children) were largely written out of William’s memoir is because of embarrassment over Ben.
The book also reassembles the story of William-Maw Shaw, Ann’s older son, who was never in Africa but was an Anglican clergyman in Canada, Officiating Minister at Highgate Cemetery in London and finally a vicar in Lancashire. It ends in Chapter 22 with ‘Remains’ or what could be termed ‘Protestant relics’, illustrating and describing Ann’s funeral card and her grave – as well as a silver trowel inscribed with the name Annshaw (by 1877 a place name) for the biggest mission in the Cape and given to Ann’s daughter at the laying of the Foundation Stone of Kama Memorial Church. Some fascinating material culture complements the written sources.
Joy McAlpine-Smith is a creative writer on a personal quest, not an academically trained historian. Not infrequently she writes ‘I discovered’ of a book or manuscript. The writing is novelistic and colloquial, and highly readable, although there is the occasional jarring anachronistic or American turn of phrase, for example speaking of William-Maw’s ‘Freshman year’ at Cambridge (218). She has no hesitation about ascribing emotions and motivation to her subjects or to describing her own. She is sometimes overwhelmed by indignation at the erasure of Ann’s experience and contribution, as when she contemplates the information panel about Ann at the commemoration Methodist Church of Southern Africa in Makhanda. The intensity of her identification with Ann Shaw may be disconcerting to the academic reader, for example when she writes: ‘I found her resurrected. I envisioned her walking, bonnet down, into the wind, as I wandered the Fens … I was a teacher like her, and like her I trained teachers … 3 per cent of her DNA seeped through my skin.’ (318) She is unashamedly excited and emotional when she describes places associated with Ann or ‘discoveries’ in the archives.
But this is combined with impressive and solid research and scholarship. Many footnotes testify to the extent of her research and background reading. The Selective Bibliography has twenty pages of primary and secondary sources: manuscripts, archives, printed books, newspapers, journal articles.
Joy McAlpine-Black takes pride in the results of her quest: ‘Ann Shaw’s biography is [a] shift in perspective. By pulling the female thread, I have found a new and nuanced version of early South African history. One which centres on women and their words, where their lives are the ink and the content, not the space between the lines.’ (318)
