Agnes Helwig: Resourceful and Reliable

Agnes Helwig

Agnes Lillian Helwig, nee Ramsden, was born in Ocho Rios, St Ann, Jamaica, on September 21, 1880, to Joseph and Ella Ramsden. Joseph Wood Ramsden, her father, had been born in Manchester, Jamaica, in 1827, to a father whose roots were traceable to Yorkshire, England and a Jamaican mother, Ann Wadsworth. Agnes was registered as a British subject.

Agnes grew up in a small family and was sent to England where she pursued an undergraduate degree at the University of Manchester and trained as a teacher at at the University of Oxford. attended became a teacher. Returning to Jamaica, she joined the staff of Westwood High School in Trelawny.  On December 1918, Agnes exchanged matrimonial vows with Sidney Henry Helwig in the lecture room at Westwood High School. Rev Ernest Price, president of Calabar Theological College, was the officiating minister, and he was assisted by Rev Joseph Thrift, pastor of Stewart Town Baptist Church. Rev. George E. Henderson of Brown’s Town was the give-away father and Rev. Randolph A. L. Knight of Falmouth, the groomsman. All the bridesmaids were nieces of Mrs. Helwig.

As indicated in an earlier blogpost, Mrs. Helwig’s husband, Rev. Sydney Henry Augustus Helwig, hailed from Bethany in St Ann. He was born to Henry Helwig and Frederica Helwig, nee Haltaufarhide, from Manchester, Jamaica. Henry’s grandfather migrated to Jamaica from Essen, Germany many years before.

Mrs. Helwig joined her husband while he served in the Mt Carey circuit and she partnered him in ministry in the churches associated with Mt Carey and Bethel Town circuits and at the Second Baptist Church in Montego Bay.

 

Mrs. Helwig concentrated her efforts in ministry among women and children. Not surprisingly, she was among the twelve women who gathered in Bethel; Town in December 1922 and formed the Jamaica Baptist Women’s Federation. At the inaugural meeting of the JBWF in Bethel Town, Mrs Helwig was chosen as JBWF Treasurer.

In 1932, when J. T. Dillon of First Baptist Church, Montego Bay, was JBU Chairman, he referred to Mrs Helwig in his address to the Assembly:

 

Mrs. Agnes Helwig, the energetic and painstaking Treasurer of the Pansy Garden Fund, was called to pass through the fire of bodily affliction, but she came out of the furnace without even the smell of fire upon her. We rejoice with her, with her husband our Brother Helwig, in her marvellous recovery to the home, the churches at Mt. Carey and Shortwood, and to the J.B.W.F.

 

She devoted much of her time to Elizabeth Garland Hall’s Pansy Home for Children, serving as its treasurer.

In 1938, when Jamaica was celebrating the centenary of emancipation, Mrs. Helwig was the person who contributed the chapter on “Baptist Women’s Work” to the book Liberty and Progress, edited by R. A. L. Knight. In it, she claimed that “though the women formed the majority of the members of our Baptist churches, they had no representation in the Union.” The women’s organization was formed “to draw [them women] into closer fellowship and benefit the whole denomination.”

Mrs. Helwig had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease when on January 9, 1955, she took her last breath in Montego Bay. She was 75 years old. Officiating her funeral was Rev. R.A. L Knight, assisted by the Revds. E.H. Greaves, A. McKenzie, A Clark and A.C. Walker. The full choir of the of Calvary Baptist Church was in attendance with Mr. L. Mowatt, organist and choirmaster, at the organ. Mourners numbered some 1,500 persons, who packed the church and flowed into the streets around the building. They represented a cross-section of the Montego Bay community. Burial took place in the Baptist cemetery.