(11 July 1863-7 Feb. 1893), subject of faith healing, missionary. (Maggie Scott, Maggie H. Scott, Margaret H. Scott) Born at her parents’ home, Mount Joy farm, GC, about four miles east of Martintown. Parents: William Scott and his wife Mary Hamilton.
On 2 April 1879, after returning from school, she took ill. She describes how, more than three years later, after much gruelling experience of paralysis and pain and the likelihood of death, she was suddenly and miraculously cured through her Christian faith on 31 Oct. 1882. She became widely known through this cure. Two articles in the Toronto Globe (14 Nov. 1882, 11 Dec. 1882) on her cure totalled some 30 column inches. Her brother the Rev. A.H. Scott wrote that “A special correspondent from one of the Montreal daily journals was sent to ascertain the facts accompanying the recovery” and that “Tidings of the restoration were circulated far and wide by means of the press.” (Ten Years in My First Charge, 91) Her experience of healing was described in a little booklet, “How I Was Healed,” by Maggie H. Scott, Mount Joy Farm, Martintown Feb. 13, 1883. This booklet, probably distributed as a religious tract, is now exceedingly rare. A copy is described in the Glengarry Historical Society newsletter of 21 Oct. 1990, but on inquiry in 1982 no copy in any Canadian library could be traced through interlibrary loan. Her brother reprints what appears to be the text of this booklet in his Ten Years in My First Charge, where he describes it as having “gone forth in successive editions… to tens of thousands of readers.” (Ten Years, 76) The survival rate of copies of Canadian religious tracts of the 19th century was virtually zero, so it is not surprising that the work is now rare.
After her recovery, Margaret Scott was active in missionary work in Canada. Among other atttendances, she spoke at her brother’s church in Owen Sound, and at the services of a religious revival taking place at Finch in Stormont County. She went to China as a missionary in 1890 with her sister Christina Janet Scott but returned home in 1892 because of ill health. Towards the end of 1892 it was reported that Miss Maggie Scott of Mount Joy, described as having returned from China some months ago, was not improving in health. (Glengarrian 9 Dec. 1892, in King’s Road column) Her death soon followed, at the family home, Mount Joy, at the age of 29. Presbyterian. She was not married. In the relatively short interval between her return to Canada and her death, she did missionary work in Canada.
Her experience as a crippled child recalls the story of Daniel McKillican, the hero of the Rev. James Drummond’s story, A Forest Flower (1849?). Another crippled child appears as one of the secondary characters in Margaret Murray Robertson’s novel Shenac (1866).
Hartley 69-75 (portrait) * MacMillan, Kirk: index * Scott, Ten Years, as cited * addresses audience in Cornwall with view to forming branch of the Missionary Society, Cornwall Freeholder (-) Oct. 1883, cited DTL Standard Freeholder 2 Oct. 1948 * her mother’s obituary (undated clipping), WSC 12 * see refs. life of Christina Scott