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Name: DOUGALL, James Watson Cunningham (Rev.)

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Birth Date: 8 Apr 1896 Auchterarder, Perthshire

Death Date: 9 Nov 1980 Edinburgh

First Date: 1925

Last Date: 1936

Profession: Principal, Jeanes School 1925-31

Area: 1930 Box 340, Nairobi

Married: In London 12 Aug 1924 Nan McGibbon Eadie b. 1898 Scotland, d. 1977

Children: Donald (1925); Ian (1930); Angus (13 Dec 1934); Elizabeth (1936)

Author: Christians in the African Revolution, 1963, and others

Book Reference: Tignor, Red 31, Thurnwald, Benson, Dominion, Rabai, Foster

War Service: Royal Garrison Artillery

School: George Watson's Coll.; Glasgow Academy; Perth Academy

General Information:

Benson - 1935 - Educational Adviser and former Principal of the Jeanes School
Dominion - Education Department - School Principal - 1930
Foster - In 1932 he was the Educational Adviser to the Protestant Missions. He left Kenya in October 1936
Tignor - First director of Jeanes School, Kabete
Gazette - 4/11/1925 - Arrived on 1st Appointment - Principal Training School, Education - J.W.C. Dougall
Gazette - Voters List 1936 - Rev James Watson C. Dougall, Educational Missionary, Lower Kabete Rd. And Nan McGibbon Dougal, Married woman, Lower Kabete Rd.
1939 England and Wales Register living in Reigate (no wife there)
RAI website: Kenneth R. Ross, International Bulletin of Mission Research: James W. C. Dougall was born on April 8, 1896, in the town of Auchterarder in Perthshire, Scotland. (1) He grew up in a strongly Christian home. His mother was well known locally for championing the cause of temperance, a powerful popular movement at that time. His pastor was James S. Stewart, who later became one of Scotland's most celebrated preachers and published highly valued volumes of sermons. (2) Growing up nearby was Nan Eadie, who became his childhood sweetheart; in 1924 they married. Theirs was a very strong marriage, based perhaps on an attraction of opposites, as Nan's fiery, emotional, and temperamental character contrasted with the calm, dispassionate, and diplomatic personality of James. They were blessed with four children but had the sadness of losing one son at the age of fifteen.
James was educated at George Watson's College in Edinburgh, Glasgow Academy, and Perth Academy. He served in the Observation Corps in the First World War, an experience of which he never spoke. He completed his M.A. at Glasgow University in 1919 and proceeded to Trinity College, Glasgow, to prepare for ordination to the ministry. During these years he was greatly influenced by the Student Christian Movement, and through it he became interested in missionary work. The memory of the Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference was still fresh in Scotland, and it cast its spell over young Dougall, causing him to think of giving his life to "the evangelization of the world in this generation."
The calling to missionary service found expression, following ordination in 1923, with Dougall's acceptance of a major responsibility in Africa as secretary of the Phelps-Stokes Commission (1923-24). This commission, the initiative of New York-based philanthropists, examined the situation throughout Africa in order to determine how education might best be developed. Its reports led to the colonial governments' taking much greater responsibility for education in the African community. For Dougall it was a unique opportunity to develop an extensive familiarity with the African situation. He therefore already had wide experience when he began his work in Kenya, where from 1925 to 1931 he served as principal of Jeanes School in Kabete, and from 1932 to 1936 as educational adviser to the non-Roman Missions in Kenya and Uganda. His eleven years there left him with a deep sense of identification with Africa and its people.
Dougall returned to the U.K. in 1936 to become a secretary of the Conference of British Missionary Societies. His position enabled him to develop a wide range of contacts and connections. Particularly influential was friendship with Joe and Mary Oldham at a time when Oldham was at the height of his influence on missionary and ecumenical thinking. (3) In 1940 Dougall embarked on what was to be twenty years of service in the secretariat of the Church of Scotland Foreign Mission Committee, as associate secretary from 1940 to 1946 and general secretary from 1946 to 1960. On his retirement, the committee recognized that "with his unique knowledge and experience of the World Church, his outstanding gifts and his unusual insight into the nature of missionary trends, he has been the guide, inspirer and formulator of the policy of the Committee in recent years." (4) Finally, he was elected to serve as convener of the new Overseas Council, which brought together all the Church of Scotland committees concerned with overseas work, from 1964 to 1969. After the death of his wife, Nan, in 1977, it was said that "there was a darkness about him." Three years later, on November 9, 1980, he died quite suddenly in Edinburgh.

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