Johanna Meeuwsen

Johanna Meeuwsen (26 May 1857 – 30 January 1942) was a South African missionary of Dutch descent. She was the first single woman missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) in the Transvaal.

Biography

Meeuwsen was born in Wellington, Cape Province, to Dutch parents.[1][2] She was a member of the inaugural class of the Huguenot Seminary for girls (later the Huguenot College) in Wellington.[1][2][3]

In 1875, Meeuwsen became the first single woman missionary to go to the DRC’s mission field in the northwestern Transvaal.[1][2][4][5] She had trained for a single year before her mission.[6] With Sarie Horak, Meeuwsen learned the Setswana language and started a school for children of the Batlhako tribe,[1][2] which was funded by the Huguenot Seminary.[7][8] At the school, children were converted to Christianity and prayer meetings and singing lessons were held, despite malaria attacks.[1][2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Van Schalkwyk, Annalet. "Meeuwsen, Johanna (1857-1942)". Dictionary of African Christian Biography. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d e Anderson, Gerald H. (1999). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 452. ISBN 978-0-8028-4680-8.
  3. ^ "Ferguson, Abbie Park (1837-1919) and Bliss, Anna Elvira (1843-1925), Founders of Huguenot College, and leaders of the early South African Dutch Reformed women's missionary movement". History of Missiology, Boston University. Retrieved 9 November 2025.
  4. ^ Ferguson, George P. (1927). The Builders of Huguenot: (being the History of the Huguenot Institution at Wellington, from the Intimate Papers of the Bulders.). M. Miller. p. 33.
  5. ^ Murray, Isabelle (2017). "Die stil stem van die vroue in die vroeë sendingwerk van der Kaapsche Kerk in Njassaland (1896-1906) Deel I: Uitstuur- of opleidingskonteks". Stellenbosch Theological Journal (in Afrikaans). 3 (1): 251–283. doi:10.17570/stj.2017.v3n1.a12. ISSN 2413-9467.
  6. ^ Saayman, Willem A. (2007). Being Missionary, Being Human: An Overview of Dutch Reformed Mission. Cluster Publications. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-875053-65-0.
  7. ^ Duff, S. E. (1 December 2011). "'Onschuldig vermaak': The Dutch Reformed Church and Children's Leisure Time in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony". South African Historical Journal. 63 (4): 495–513. doi:10.1080/02582473.2011.626792. ISSN 0258-2473.
  8. ^ Duff, S. E. (26 May 2015). Changing Childhoods in the Cape Colony: Dutch Reformed Church Evangelicalism and Colonial Childhood, 1860-1895. Springer. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-137-38094-4.
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