The American Missionary. Volume 44, No. 01, January, 1890

WORDS FROM OUR ANNUAL MEETING,

OF SPECIAL INTEREST TO WOMEN

Twenty-six Woman's State Organizations now co-operate with us in our missionary work. Each year shows the increasing importance and helpfulness of the Woman's Bureau. From it go counsel, help and inspiration to the lady teachers in the field, and missionary news and helpful suggestions to the ladies of the State Associations. Through it pass the sympathy and the help of the earnest workers in the older churches to the earnest workers in our mission churches and schools. The people for whom we labor can not be saved either for this world or the next unless the women who make the homes are lifted out of coarseness and vice, and taught true womanhood and womanly duties and arts. The Woman's Bureau is a most potent factor in the work of bringing the gospel to the rescue of womanhood in our mission fields.

Annual Report of Executive Committee.

Our laborers are faced by all the serious problems of the foreign land—problems unrelieved by a single romantic charm. When we send our missionaries to Africa they go to labor among the Africans; and when we send them down South they go to teach "niggers." I believe that the American Missionary Association, in its calm and unimpassioned history, is one grand and splendid eulogy of woman. Our sisters went South while the sky was yet heavy with the clouds of war; they went to the rude dwellings where those people sat in stupor and in darkness after the first thrill of the new found liberty; they went from homes of refinement and culture and wealth and religion; they bore to this darkness light, to this dullness life; they carried down there in their white hands the great tree of Calvary, the cross of Christ, and planted it in the land of the magnolia and the palm. I say that the history of this Association is a grand and glowing eulogy of woman because these were willing to be called "teachers of niggers" for their love of humanity.

Rev. C.W. Hiatt.

It is one of the most astonishing signs of the times that really into the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of the situation. They respect these educated girls, they reverence them and give them a place of dignity in their hearts. That makes it possible for these women to do a large and splendid work in the South.

Once let these girls that come under the influence of our Christian Northern women who go there as teachers, and the graduates of these various colleges and schools that we have planted, and are about to plant in the South; once let common womanhood in the South that has been so much under the heel of this oppression; once let girlhood feel the power that has come to girlhood, that to them as young women in the cradle of these hills, under this fair sky, is given the power to turn over in not less than thirty or forty years this whole country for God and humanity, for enlightenment and for Christian peace; once let that idea get into the minds of those girls, and we have not the same problem that we have to-day.

Rev. D.M. Fisk.

There were deeds of valor by mountain heroines that shine as brightly as those of a Molly Stark or Barbara Frietchie. Mrs. Edwards, of Campbell County, marched 150 miles in inclement weather, over the mountains, to carry information to Union troops. Immediately upon arriving at home, having received some valuable information, she pushed her way through the rain, on horseback, alone, and saved the Union General Spears from capture. Again and again this same woman took perilous journeys to carry information to Union officers. Nor was she the only heroine among the mountain women. During the siege of Knoxville, General Grant desired to send an important message to General Burnside. "So overrun was the territory between Chattanooga and Knoxville by Confederate troops that it could only be delivered, if at all, with great difficulty and hazard. At length Miss Mary Love, of Kingston, Tenn., agreed to take the message through the Confederate lines." She got as far as Louisville, Tenn., but could get no farther. There she found but one person who was willing to run the risk of taking the message through the lines, and he was a boy only thirteen years of age, John T. Brown. He carried the dispatch safely through the lines and delivered it to General Burnside.

Let us build school-houses and churches, where their better cabins have risen from the ashes of the past. Let us invade their coves and press up their mountain sides with an army of Christian teachers and preachers, until the gray old forests that echoed with the shout of these loyal Highlanders shall again echo with the sound of church bell and school bell, and they who took from us the larger sacrifice of war, shall find that we are ready to share with them the blessed fruits of peace.

Secretary C.J. Ryder.

There is, furthermore, a peaceful Christian invasion of this land. We scarcely realize how much these gospel songs mean to those Southern people, and how they listen with eagerness at once to the sweetness of the tune and to the gospel that is within it. It is an entering wedge to a new life there. A dear girl of my acquaintance taught from thirty to fifty of these women; they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down their cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about Jesus, for we want to be different kind of women, different kind of mothers."

There was one girl who came out to one of our commencements and went back with the arrow in her heart, saying, "I would give all the world if I had it, if I could write a piece, and git up thar and read it like them." She went home determined she would go to college. She was a large girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter. She walked fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president, that she wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school. What could she do? He found that really she was incapacitated for doing anything; but she said; "I can hoe corn like a nigger." Finally she was set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go, where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw—men shot down before her face and eyes by the whiskey distillers—and she was asked to organize a Sunday-school there. When any one starts a Sunday-school he is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there. And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.

Rev. D.M. Fisk.

There is another influence of which I would speak, the influence of the home. Here in our happy homes we know but very little of what that means to the Indian. An Indian has no home, in our sense of the word. There is at Santee Agency a piece of limestone, perhaps three feet wide by five feet long, which was the hearthstone of our Dakota mission home. It was taken a few years ago by my brother, from Minnesota, where it had served the purpose of a hearthstone in one of the original buildings of the mission. He took it to Santee Agency, and every time I go to Santee, I go out and look at that stone. There is the hole in the stone into which we poured milk to feed the cat, and on another corner is the place where we used to crack nuts. That stands for our boyhood home. The Indian has nothing of the kind. The Dakota Indian lives in a region, not in a place. The Christian home coming into the midst of a village carries there an ideal of which the Indian knows nothing, and he is taught by the power of example day after day. The Christian woman in that home keeps her house clean, keeps her children clean, and stands here as a persistent example of the power of the gospel of soap.

Rev. T.L. Riggs.

Carlyle tells the story of a woman in the North of Scotland in the old days before charity was organized, who wanted help. She was poor and sick, and they said to her, "You may look out for yourself." Finally she was taken sick with typhus fever, and died, and because they didn't take very good care of her in the place where she was sick, she killed seventeen others with her poison. Carlyle says: "You said she was not your sister and she said, 'I am, and I will prove it;' and she did, though it cost seventeen good lives to prove it." There will be a typhus fever in this land infinitely worse than any pestilence that kills the body unless this deadly germ be killed by putting education where there is ignorance, and putting honor and truth where there is degradation to-day. "Look out for No. 1?" Aye, it is our business to look out for ourselves. May God Almighty help us that we fail not to attend to it. There is just one way to save ourselves. We learned that long ago at the feet of Him who said: "He that loseth his life shall save it." That is the only way. It is just as true for a nation as for an individual.

President George A. Gates.

WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS

CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION

MAINE

WOMAN'S AID TO A.M.A

Chairman of Committee—Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.

VERMONT

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. A.E. Swift, 167 King St., Burlington.

Secretary—Mrs. E.C. Osgood, 14 First Ave., Montpelier.

Treasurer—Mrs. Wm. P. Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury.

MASSACHUSETTS AND RHODE ISLAND

¹WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION

President—Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer, Cambridge, Mass.

Secretary—Miss Nathalie Lord, 32 Congregational House, Boston.

Treasurer—Miss Ella A. Leland, 32 Congregational House, Boston.

CONNECTICUT

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. Francis B. Cooley, Hartford.

Secretary—Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Aye., Hartford.

Treasurer—Mrs. W.W. Jacobs, 19 Spring St., Hartford.

NEW YORK

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. Wm. Kincaid, 483 Greene Ave., Brooklyn.

Secretary—Mrs. Wm. Spalding, 6 Salmon Block, Syracuse.

Treasurer—Mrs. L.H. Cobb, 59 Bible House, New York City.

OHIO

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. J.G.W. Cowles, 417 Sibley St., Cleveland.

Secretary—Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin.

Treasurer—Mrs. Phebe A. Crafts, 95 Monroe Ave., Columbus.

INDIANA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. C.B. Safford, Elkhart.

Secretary—Mrs. W.E. Moseman, Fort Wayne.

Treasurer—Mrs. C. Evans, Indianapolis.

ILLINOIS

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. B.F. Leavitt, 409 Orchard St, Chicago.

Secretary—Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago.

Treasurer—Mrs. C.E. Maltby, Champaign.

IOWA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. T.O. Douglass, Grinnell.

Secretary—Miss Ella E. Marsh, Box 232, Grinnell.

Treasurer—Mrs. M.J. Nichoson, 1513 Main St., Dubuque.

MICHIGAN

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. George M. Lane, 47 Miami Ave., Detroit.

Secretary—Mrs. Leroy Warren, Lansing.

Treasurer—Mrs. E.F. Grabill, Greenville.

WISCONSIN

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. H.A. Miner, Madison.

Secretary—Mrs. C. Matter, Brodhead.

Treasurer—Mrs. C.C. Keeler, Beloit.

MINNESOTA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY

President—Mrs. E.S. Williams, Box 464, Minneapolis.

Secretary—Miss Gertrude A. Keith, 1350, Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis

Treasurer—Mrs. M.W. Skinner, Northfield.

NORTH DAKOTA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY

President—Mrs. A.J. Pike, Dwight.

Secretary—Mrs. Silas Daggett, Harwood.

Treasurer—Mrs. J.M. Fisher, Fargo.

SOUTH DAKOTA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. A.H. Robbins, Bowdle.

Secretary—Mrs. T.M. Jeffris, Huron.

Treasurer—Mrs. S.E. Fifield, Lake Preston.

NEBRASKA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. T.H. Leavitt, 3316 H. St., Lincoln.

Secretary—Mrs. L.F. Berry, 724 No. Broad St, Fremont.

Treasurer—Mrs. D.E. Perry, Crete.

MISSOURI

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. C.L. Goodell, 3006 Pine St., St. Louis.

Secretary—Mrs. E.P. Bronson, 3100 Chestnut St., St. Louis.

Treasurer—Mrs. A.E. Cook, 4145 Bell Ave., St. Louis.

KANSAS

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY

President—Mrs. F.J. Storrs, Topeka.

Secretary—Mrs. George L. Epps, Topeka.

Treasurer—Mrs. J.G. Dougherty, Ottawa.

COLORADO AND WYOMING

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. J.W. Pickett, White Water, Colorado.

Secretary—Miss Mary L. Martin, 106 Platte Ave., Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Treasurer—Mrs. S.A. Sawyer, Boulder, Colorado.

Treasurer—Mrs. C.T. Goodell, 24th and Eddy Sts., Cheyenne, Wyoming.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. Elijah Cash, 927 Temple St., Los Angeles.

Secretary—Mrs. H.K.W. Bent, Box 426, Pasadena.

Treasurer—Mrs. H.W. Mills, So. Olive St., Los Angeles.

CALIFORNIA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY

President—Mrs. H.L. Merritt, 686 34th St., Oakland.

Secretary—Miss Grace E. Barnard, 677 21st. St., Oakland.

Treasurer—Mrs. J.M. Havens, 1329 Harrison St., Oakland.

LOUISIANA

WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. R.D. Hitchcock, New Orleans.

Secretary—Miss Jennie Fyfe, 490 Canal St., New Orleans.

Treasurer—Mrs. C.S. Shattuck, Hammond.

MISSISSIPPI

WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. A.F. Whiting, Tougaloo.

Secretary—Miss Sarah J. Humphrey, Tougaloo.

Treasurer—Miss S.L. Emerson, Tougaloo.

ALABAMA

WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. H.W. Andrews, Talladega.

Secretary—Miss S.S. Evans, 2612 Fifth Ave., Birmingham.

Treasurer—Mrs. G. Baker, Selma.

FLORIDA

WOMAN'S HOME MISSIONARY UNION

President—Mrs. S.F. Gale, Jacksonville.

Secretary—Mrs. Nathan Barrows, Winter Park.

Treasurer—Mrs. L.C. Partridge, Longwood.

TENNESSEE AND ARKANSAS

WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION OF THE CENTRAL SOUTH ASSOCIATION

President—Miss M.F. Wells, Athens, Tenn.

Secretary—Miss A.M. Cahill, Nashville, Tenn.

Treasurer—Mrs. G.S. Pope, Grand View, Tenn.

NORTH CAROLINA

WOMAN'S MISSIONARY UNION

President—Miss E. Plimpton, Chapel Hill.

Secretary—Miss A.E. Farrington, Raleigh.

Treasurer—Miss Lovey Mayo, Raleigh.