This is from the Who was Who chapter in my non-fiction book, God's Triangle, about my investigation into the scandal and cover-up surrounding Florence M. "Florrie" Cox and her disastrous marriage to the Australian Baptist missionary, the Rev Frank E. Paice, who later married fellow missionary, A. Olga Johnston
Alvina
Olga “Olga” Johnston (later Paice) 1884-1966
Olga
Johnston was the child of immigrant parents. Her father, Abraham Johnston, was
an agricultural labourer in Southern Ireland. Her mother, Maria Dorothea
Juliane “Julia” Holzgrefe, was born near Hanover in Germany. It was a double
wedding for Julia and her elder sister, Wilhelmina. It took place in November
1869 at the home of the girls’ father, Christoph, near Carapook, a farming area
between Coleraine and Casterton in Victoria.
The
service was conducted by an Evangelical Lutheran clergyman, but the Johnston
family were Church of England. Julia was just 17 when she was married. Her
sister was 20. The wedding register gave Abraham’s age as 31, but other records
make it clear that he was 38 or 39.
It seems
likely that Julia was pregnant at the time of her marriage, as the first-born
arrived less than seven months after the wedding. In all, Julia bore Abraham
eight children, the last of whom was Olga, born on September 20, 1884, at
Carapook.
Not much
is known about Julia (sometimes also called Julia Anna), other than that she
died aged just 37 in July 1889 when Olga was only four years old, leaving her
and some of the other younger siblings to be brought up by their father and
eldest sister, Dora.
Quite a bit
of information is available about Abraham, thanks chiefly to an obituary in the
Portland Guardian of May 16, 1921. From this, we discover that he was a tough
and resourceful character.
The
obituary reports that when Abraham was setting out for Australia from Liverpool
on the City of Lincoln in 1852, the ship’s owners went bankrupt. Abraham and
his fellow passengers seized control of the ship with the intention of sailing
it to Melbourne, where they hoped to sell it to recover their expenses. This
escapade, with its unpredictable consequences, became unnecessary when the
vessel was bought by another firm of ship owners and the voyage took place
without further incident.
Before
establishing himself as a farmer at Carapook, Abraham unsuccessfully sought
riches on the goldfields of Bendigo, Ballarat and Dunolly, among other places.
For a time, he went into business using a horse and dray to transport flour
around the Bendigo and Ballarat areas.
There are
no records of how the Johnston family coped with the death of Julia. Nor is it
clear whether religion played a major part in their lives.
At some
point, Olga switched from the Church of England to become a devout Baptist.
Those who might have been able to tell me about Olga’s time as a young woman
have long since died. What is known is that Olga trained as a nurse at
Melbourne’s Women’s Hospital—later renamed the Royal Women’s Hospital— before
moving to Geelong to be with her sister Dora and other members of her family.
While in
Geelong, Olga began attending the Aberdeen Street Baptist Church, which had a
reputation for evangelical fervour. It is there that she would have met and
come under the persuasive influence of Hedley Sutton, who preached there from
time to time while on furlough in Australia.
Church
records show that Olga was accepted for missionary training in September 1911.
It is not known whether Olga had any marriage prospects before becoming a
missionary, but by the time she arrived in East Bengal in 1912, she was already
28—very late for most women of that era to get married.
As there
would be few suitable Christian men available for marriage in East Bengal, she
had no doubt resigned herself to spinsterhood.
Olga’s
nursing skills would have been much valued on the missionary field, not just by
the mission staff, but also as a means of drawing in the local population to
expose them to the Christian message as they were given medical assistance and
advice.
Being a former farm girl would also have helped her cope with the physical adversities she would face in East Bengal. A photograph taken of Olga as she was about to set out for East Bengal showed her to be pretty and having a pleasant demeanour. But as the years went by, she gained a reputation as a forceful, rather intimidating and bitter character who didn’t enjoy living in Australia and had abandoned any religious affiliation. She had strong views on many subjects and was not inhibited from expressing them.
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Learn more about Frank E. Paice by going HERE.
Learn more about Florence M. "Florrie" Cox by going HERE.
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