Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | April 28, 1830 |
| Died | December 22, 1916 (aged 86) |
Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson (April 28, 1830 - December 22, 1916) was the wife of the Methodist missionary Otis Gibson.
Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | April 28, 1830 |
| Died | December 22, 1916 (aged 86) |
Elizabeth Chamberlain Gibson (April 28, 1830 - December 22, 1916) was the wife of the Methodist missionary Otis Gibson.
Eliza Chamberlain was born on April 28, 1830, at Brazier Falls, New York into a Quaker family. In her early years Eliza attended a female seminary and had a certificate to teach in schools. She met Otis Gibson in Maryland and soon fell in love with each other. She married Otis in spite of the opposition from her parents. [1]
A few months after their marriage, Eliza and Otis were called to New York City to board a clipper ship about to sail to China. On August 13, 1855, they reached Fuzhou and remained in the mission field for the next ten years. [2] They had two sons in China; one died in infancy. [1]
Due to Eliza's declining health, the Gibsons returned to the Moira, United States in 1865. [3] In 1868 the couple were appointed to nurture the new Methodist church set up in San Francisco for the large Chinese immigrants (mostly Cantonese) in California, where they remained in the field for the rest of their lives. On August 10, 1870, the Gibsons founded Women's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast. [4]
Eliza Chamberlain died on December 22, 1916, in Los Angeles.
The Oregon missionaries were pioneers who settled in the Oregon Country of North America starting in the 1830s dedicated to bringing Christianity to local Native Americans. There had been missionary efforts prior to this, such as those sponsored by the Northwest Company with missionaries from the Church of England starting in 1819. The Foreign Mission movement was already 15 years underway by 1820, but it was difficult to find missionaries willing to go to Oregon, as many wanted to go to the east, to India or China. It was not until the 1830s, when a schoolmaster from Connecticut, Hall Jackson Kelley, created his "American Society for the Settlement of the Oregon Country," that more interest and support for Oregon missionaries grew. Around the same time, four Nez Perce arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1831, with accounts differencing as to if these travelers were asking for “the book of life,” an idea used by Protestant missionaries, or if they asked for “Blackrobes,” meaning Jesuits, thus Catholic missionaries. Either way this inspired Christian missionaries to travel to the Oregon Territory. Oregon missionaries played a political role, as well as a religious one, as their missions established US political power in an area in which the Hudson’s Bay Company, operating under the British government, maintained a political interest in the Oregon country. Such missionaries had an influential impact on the early settlement of the region, establishing institutions that became the foundation of United States settlement of the Pacific Northwest.
Otis Gibson was a Methodist pastor, best known for his missionary work to the Chinese in Foochow, China and in San Francisco, California.
Harrison Gray Otis Dwight (1803–1862) was an American Congregational missionary.
The Women's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast of the Methodist Episcopal Church was founded on October 29, 1870 by Methodist Rev. Otis T. Gibson, with eleven women he recruited in August 1870, for the purpose of working among the slave girls in Chinatown, San Francisco, California. By the end of 1870, Rev. Gibson had erected the building of the "Chinese Mission Institute". In October 1871, the first woman, Jin Ho, was rescued from the bay where she had attempted suicide. She began work in a Christian family and in two years married a Christian Chinese. In 1873 a school was opened with Miss L. S. Templeton as teacher. The school mainly taught English and other necessary skills to Chinese and Japanese women and girls who had been rescued from slavery or prostitution in San Francisco Chinatown.
Robert Samuel Maclay, D.D. was an American missionary who made pioneer contributions to the Methodist Episcopal missions in China, Japan and Korea. He served as the first president of Aoyama Gakuin University.
Thomas James (1804–1891) had been a slave who became an African Methodist Episcopal Zion minister, abolitionist, administrator and author. He was active in New York and Massachusetts with abolitionists, and served with the American Missionary Association and the Union Army during the American Civil War to supervise the contraband camp in Louisville, Kentucky. After the war, he held national offices in the AME Church and was a missionary to black churches in Ohio. While in Massachusetts, he challenged the railroad's custom of forcing blacks into second-class carriages and won a reversal of the rule in the State Supreme Court. He wrote a short memoir published in 1886.
Rev. Stephen Livingstone Baldwin was an American missionary to China by the Methodist Episcopal Church. His ministerial life covered a period of forty-four years, half of which was spent at Foochow.
Church of Heavenly Peace, also known as Church of Heavenly Rest or Tien Ang Tong, is a Christian church in Fuzhou, China.
Peter Johnson Gulick was a missionary to the Kingdom of Hawaii and Japan. His descendants carried on the tradition of missionary work, and included several scientists.
Elizabeth Fisher Brewster was an American Methodist missionary to China for 65 years, and was known in China as "the Shepherdess Mother of Hinghwa."
Martha Foster Crawford was an American writer and missionary to China (1852–1909). She was the first foreign missionary from Alabama. Her parents were the deacon, John Lovelace Savidge Foster, and Susanna Hollifield Foster. In 1851, shortly before she became a missionary to China, she married Tarleton Perry Crawford, whom she had known for three weeks. They arrived in Shanghai in March 1852. During their marriage, they adopted two children.
Hur Libertas "H. L." Mackenzie was a leading Scottish medical missionary and minister for the Presbyterian Church of England who was revered by the church for his nearly four decades of service to their mission at Shantou (Swatow). During his tenure at the mission he made numerous lasting contributions such as his translation of the scriptures into the local Swatow dialect, ensuring the accessibility of important religious works, and establishment of out-stations that greatly expanded the mission's reach. Outside of Shantou, Mackenzie founded the Taiwan Mission on behalf of the Presbyterian Church and was invited to speak at missionary conferences in an array of cities that included Philadelphia, Shanghai, and Bristol.
Belle Harris Bennett led the struggle for and won laity rights for women in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. She was the founding president of the Woman's Missionary Council of the Southern Methodist Church. Much of her work including fundraising and organizational efforts to provide higher education for a new professional class of social workers and community organizers in the Southern Methodist Church in the U.S. and abroad. Her carefully collaborative support for African Americans and immigrants was considered radical at that time by Southerners. She was a suffragist and supporter of temperance as well.
Jennie V. Hughes was an American Methodist missionary in China. She co-founded the Bethel Mission in Shanghai with Chinese doctor Shi Meiyu.
Lucinda L. Combs-Stritmatter was an American physician who was the first female medical missionary to provide medical care in China and is credited with establishing the first women's hospital in what was then Peking. Combs was a pioneer in women's medical care while serving the Women's Foreign Ministry Society's North China Mission for seven years.
Caroline Wellwood was a Canadian nurse, nursing educator, and Christian missionary in China.
Eliza White was a Wesleyan Methodist missionary to New Zealand and leader in establishing a Ladies Christian Association in Auckland. This organisation was a predecessor to the Auckland Young Women's Christian Association. Her journal, archived at St. John's Theological College in Auckland, provides a unique first-hand account of the life of an English woman evangelist in New Zealand.
Elizabeth Litchfield Cunnyngham was an American missionary and church worker of the long nineteenth century. For 30 years, she served as president of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Nashville, Tennessee. She was also editor of leaflets and a Sunday school teacher. While in China, having learned the Chinese language, she also translated tracts and small books into the local dialect.
Margaret B. Denning was an American missionary and temperance worker who spent 29 years in India. She was also the author two books, Mosaics from India (1902) and Dainty cookery for the home (1903).
