Margaret Paton

Margaret Paton born Maggie Whitecross (18 April 1841 – 16 May 1905) was a British missionary to the New Hebrides. She founded the Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union.

Life Paton was born in 1841 in Prestonpans in Scotland. Her father was the Rev. John Whitecross.

On 17 June 1864 she married John Gibson Paton who had returned the year before from the New Hebrides where he had been a missionary. She was his second wife. In the same year, her husband was elected to be the moderator of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. In 1865 they arrived back in the New Hebrides where her husband arranged for a punitive mission by the British on the people of Tanna where he had previously been based. They were not the first missionaries there but they were the most successful. During the fifteen years that they were on the island, the whole of the population identified as Christian. This was about 200 people.

Paton died in Kew in 1905. She was survived by her husband, who was buried beside her two years later. Their gravestone also records their twins sons and John Whitecross Paton who was born in 1880 and lived until 1962. Two churches were named in her memory: The Paton Memorial Church in Port Vila and another in Korea.