Legends, John G Paton (1824-1907)
The life and ministry of John G Paton has all the mystery intrigue and suspense of any of Hollywood’s best thrillers – only better. This story centres on the islands of the PPT New Hebrides in the South Pacific.

In 1606, a chain of eighty islands in the South Pacific was discovered by Fernandez de Quiros of Spain. In 1773, the Islands were explored by Captain James Cook and named the New Hebrides because of the similarities with the Hebrides Islands off NW coast of Scotland.

Wasn’t until 1980 the New Hebrides gained its independence from Britain and France and was named Vanuatu.

The chain of Islands is about 720 klm long. If you draw a line straight from Honolulu to Sydney, it will cut through Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, two thirds of the way between Hawaii and Australia.

But our story begins in 1839 when John Williams and James Harris from the London Missionary Society landed on the New Hebrides Islands (Vanuatu).

Both of these missionaries were killed and eaten by cannibals on Erromanga on November 20 of that year, only minutes after going ashore.

The London Missionary Society sent another team to the Island of Tanna in 1842, and these missionaries were driven off within seven months.

“After that it proved difficult to find missionary volunteers.”

But come they did… But on the Island of Aneityum, John Geddie from the Presbyterian church in Nova Scotia (coming in 1848) and John Inglis from The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland (coming in 1852) saw amazing fruit, so that by 1854 “about 3,500 savages [more than half the population] threw away their idols, renouncing their heathen customs and avowing themselves to be worshippers of the true Jehovah God”.

When Geddie died 1872 all population Aneityum were said to be Christians.

Enter our legend – John Gibson Paton (1824-1907) Presbyterian missionary, born 24 May 1824 at Kirkmahoe, Scotland, eldest of 11 children of James Paton, “a stocking manufacturer of Covenanting principles.”
He was briefly a relieving teacher in the Maryhill Free Church School and for ten years an effective evangelist in the Glasgow City Mission.
23 March 1858 ordained as minister/missionary to the New Hebrides. He sailed for the New Hebrides (via Australia) with his wife Mary on April 16, 1858, at the age of 33.