John Hamilton Pagan, Scottish minister and plant collector, was the son of John Pagan, Doctor of Divinity and amateur botanist, and his wife Margaret Wiseman, born Lang. He studied at the University of Glasgow and qualified as Master of Arts (MA) in 1891 and Bachelor of Divinity (BD) in 1894. He came to South Africa in or before 1901, for in that year he requested the authorities of the Orange River Colony (now the Free State) to appoint him as a marriage officer. By 1908 he was a minister in the Presbyterian Church in South Africa and resided in Kimberley. Just before his death he wrote The flower of the hidden crown, and other letters to boys and girls from a South African stoep (Edinburgh, 1913; 4^th ed., 1922), a collection of letters originally published in the Presbyterian Churchman.

In 1910 Pagan collected, dried and named a number of plants at Klein Boetsap (west of Warrenton, in the Northern Cape) for the McGregor Museum in Kimberley. Two years later he presented the museum with a large number of mounted and named plants from De Aar. He was survived by his wife Agnes Elizabeth Leslie, born Blair.

List of sources:

FamilySearch: John Hamilton Pagan. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/934D-9HG/john-hamilton-pagan-1871-1913 AND https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQF-2VCM?view=index&personArk=/ark:/61903/1:1:QGRK-PBB7&action=view&cc=2517051&lang=en&groupId=M9DB-XQF

General Directory of South Africa, 1908, Ecclesiastical directory.

McGregor Museum. Annual meeting, Curator's report. Diamond Fields Advertiser, 10 February 1911 and 2 April 1913.

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS), at http://www.national.archives.gov.za Documents relating to John Hamilton Pagan / J.H. Pagan.

South African bibliography to the year 1925. London: Mansell, 1979.

University of Glasgow story, at http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2025-06-26 10:27:48