Mrs. Joanna MacEwan, Inverness
The subject of this short sketch was born in Swiney, Lybster, Caithness in 1887, one of a family of 5 children who in early childhood were deprived of their God-fearing parents, the father, Donald Watt being a chemist and their mother, a daughter of the well known Capt. Robt. Ross, Wick. The children, however, were not cast in their helplessness upon the world. He who provides for the widow, gives the assurance: “Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive”. Capt. Ross some time before had suffered the loss of his godly wife and a manly son, Capt. Hugh Ross.
He received the children into his home where his unmarried daughter, Joanna gave them the care and affection which they might have received from their own parents. They enjoyed the great blessing of a godly home where they came under the loving discipline and saintly influence of the head of the home who had by this time retired from an honourable career at sea. Capt. Ross had established his reputation in sea faring circles as an intrepid, experienced ship’s master, winning the greatest respect from the crews which manned his ships as a man of high religious principle and transparently godly life, as fearless in contending for the faith as he was when facing the stormy seas around the coast. Though a man of plain speech, the somewhat forbidding exterior concealed a warm heart capable of the tenderest affection. The children while under his roof came into contact with the life and example of true godliness and when they went south to follow their calling in life, they carried with them precious memories of their early days and retained some of his more impressive sayings. They were especially made to feel the great importance of spiritual religion, that the fear of God is something more than the traditional custom or the formal observance of religious duty, of which Capt. Ross showed his dread as when at family worship he pled at a throne of grace: “Leave us not content with forms without life or power from heaven”. Capt. Ross kept an open house for the pious people who came to the Wick communion and the children came to know some of the choice people of the Church. It was a time of warm fellowship when the early ministers of our Church, such as Rev. D. MacDonald, Shieldaig and Rev. N. Cameron, Glasgow enjoyed great liberty in proclaiming the Gospel and the people found equal enjoyment in the spiritual conversation of the brethren in the home. The people among whom were some of the most eminent for piety in the north had long been dissatisfied with what they saw was taking place in the Free Church and in 1893 when the Declaratory Act was passed into a binding part of the Church’s Constitution they renounced their connection with the Free Church and were now able to hear ministers of their own choice in whom they had confidence. As a young girl Joanna Watt served in the Free Presbyterian Manse at Inverness where Rev. J. R. MacKay was minister to whom she formed a strong attachment and derived great help from his public ministry as well as from the life in the manse and always afterwards referred to the sermons she heard in those years. She had already firmly adopted those views on Church matters which she retained through life and was grieved when Mr. MacKay chose to return to the Free Church from which as a student he had separated and had thrown in his lot with the Free Presbyterian Church. It was while in Inverness that she made the acquaintance of Mr. J. B. Radasi while a student attending Rev. J. R. MacKay’s divinity classes at Inverness. Later when Rev. J. B. Radasi returned to his native Africa and opened the mission station in Rhodesia, she followed with deep interest the progress of our Rhodesian mission to which she gave warm support and even in her last years when able to do so attended the Ladies’ Mission meetings at Inverness.
Although as a young girl she loved the Lord’s people and regularly attended the Lord’s house, she was not as yet a partaker of the grace of salvation. The time of favour now drew near, the time which the Lord had set. From Inverness she went south to live with her sister, Netta, in London and here in 1911 they had the painful experience of seeing their brother, Frank who came to live with them sicken and die at the early age of 33 years. They had the consolation which sustained them in their grief of knowing that he gave evidence of having undergone a saving change but they felt keenly his death. In this time of distress Joanna found comfort from the words of Jeremiah, chapter xxxi, verse 3: “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love and with loving kindness have I drawn thee”. These means seem to have been effective in turning her heart to the Lord, for the next year at the London communion she was received by the Kirk Session into full communion. On that same day Rev. N. Cameron preached from the words in Exodus, chapter xii, verse 13: “When I see the blood I will pass over you”, a sermon full of consolation to which she listened with great enjoyment.
In 1920 Joanna who had by this time returned to the North of Scotland was united in marriage with our highly esteemed missionary Malcolm MacEwan who at the time was stationed in Stratherrick. They moved to Tain where the missionary and his wife soon gained a warm place in the affections of the Tain and Fearn people. Their marriage unhappily was cut short with the death of her husband after a brief illness and the widow was left with a young daughter to care for. She returned to Caithness and settled down at Halkirk where she renewed the friendship of the early London days by sitting under the ministry of Rev. Wm. Grant, who had given up a business career in London and was now pastor of our Halkirk congregation. Here she spent the next 30 years with her sister, Netta from whom she was not to be parted again till the time of her death, in the Halkirk home where she entertained so many of the Lord’s people and where a warm welcome awaited her friends, often from all over the world. In 1963 she came to Inverness to be near her daughter, Mrs. Janette Campbell, when her health began to fail. Some years later in 1973 she sustained a broken leg as the result of a fall and was taken to Raigmore Hospital. In the ambulance she said to her daughter: “Don’t you be grieving about this — it was in the cup for me — seek grace to say, ‘Thy will be done’.” For 6 weeks she lingered on but visibly the tabernacle was gently coming down. To friends who visited her she spoke of her Saviour, quoting the words: “Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation” — Rev. v, verse 9. She loved to hear the 14th chapter of the Gospel according to John read to her, often joining in at the more familiar passages, and on 22nd November she passed from this world of pain and suffering to be for ever, we believe, with the Lord.
The main characteristic of Mrs. MacEwan’s Christianity was a cheerful, practical godliness which gave her patient endurance in times of trouble and made her a sympathetic and helpful friend to the afflicted. She loved the Lord’s people and entertained them with great hospitality in her home. Of a discerning mind, she was strong in faith and adhered to the Testimony raised by the Free Presbyterian Church to purity of doctrine and practice which though despised so greatly today, she could see is so greatly needed in the present time when the professing Church has departed from the “Faith which was once delivered unto the saints”. She finished her course with joy and has now entered into rest in the presence of the Saviour whom she loved. May the Lord give the consolations of the Spirit and be a present help to her daughter, Mrs. Janette Campbell, Inverness, who tended her mother with the utmost devotion in her last illness.
A.F.M.