Eliza Davis George

Born in Texas in 1879 to former slaves, Eliza Davis came to faith at an early age and strove to get an education to become a teacher.  She achieved her dream and became a teacher at Central Texas College, a Christian college in central Texas.  In 1911, in her early 30s, she heard a missions speaker challenge the students to mission work in Africa.

That night, she had a dream of Africans passing before the judgment seat of Christ saying, “But no one ever told us You died for us.”  She immediately made known her intentions to go to Africa as a missionary.  Missions leaders were reluctant to send a black woman as a missionary and initially refused her application.  However, after three years of determination, Eliza departed for Liberia to begin her ministry.

Refusing to settle in the capital, Monrovia, she traveled to the more rural interior where there were few churches or missionaries.  With one partner, she opened a school called the Bible Industrial Academy, where they taught children to read and gave them job and life skills.  After two years of labor, 50 children attended the school and more than 1,000 people in the area had made professions of faith.  As the school grew, she also trained young Liberians to become teachers and missionaries themselves.

Five years after she arrived, in the turmoil of the beginning of World War I, her missions board disbanded, leaving her without support.  She and her students at times had to scavenge for food from the brush.  A British missionary doctor named G. Thompson George offered to marry her.  Despite having a rocky marriage, where he often turned to alcohol and even other women, the marriage freed her from many of the burdens of support.  They adopted three Liberian children together.  Doctor George passed away in 1939.

After her husband’s death, Eliza continued her work in Liberia for another 33 years, investing herself in hundreds of young people who grew into missionaries and teachers themselves.

When she was in her late 60s, the missions board that had picked up her support forcibly retired her.  However, she was certain God wanted her to continue her work and she was able to raise independent support for her work and return to the field.

When Eliza was well into her 90s, new missionaries came to Africa to replace her.  They expected to find a brittle, old woman but instead found an energetic, humorous woman still walking from village to village sharing God’s Word, still fasting and praying for her needs and the needs of those in her charge.

Eliza Davis George passed away in March of 1979, having just reached her 100^th birthday.

Christian History E-mail, 02 Feb 2022.
https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/blog/2021/Eliza-Davis-George
https://dacb.org/stories/liberia/george-eliza/

Minnie Watson

Minnie Watson

Minnie Cumming came to what is now Kenya, Africa, from her native Scotland in 1899 to marry her fiancé, missionary Thomas Watson.  The young couple began the work of planting a Presbyterian church in a city called Kikuyu.  Soon after she arrived, the town was hit with a locust swarm, resulting in famine, which was followed by a severe Smallpox plague.  The back-to-back disasters resulted in hundreds of people dying, many dropping in the fields where they labored and expiring there.

Thomas and Minnie labored tirelessly to minister to the sick, but before the crisis had passed Thomas contracted pneumonia and passed away - less than a year after their marriage - leaving Minnie, a young widow, to run the entire enterprise on her own - a task she performed with energy and enthusiasm.  A year later, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland assumed responsibility for the effort.  Minnie was asked to stay on and supervise the refugee school established by the mission.

She adopted two children and ensured their education.  She became a fearless advocate for the education of girls in Kenya, something that aroused opposition, sometimes the form of violence.  She also advocated against the cruel practice of female circumcision, a practiced which declined steeply in the country under her influence.

One of the children that attended her school was a boy named Jomo Kenyatta.  Five years after arriving at the school in 1914, Jomo came to faith and was baptized at the local church.  This young man became the founder and the first president of the modern nation of Kenya, serving in that role from 1964-1978.  

Minnie stayed in this role for 32 years, establishing an extensive network of schools in Kenya and laying down the standards that guided Kenyan education for generations.  Minnie had the nickname "Granny Watson" among her pupils.  She was remembered by her students as the model of a Christian lady: strict when necessary but always loving, humble, and patient.  Her diligence in her task blazed the trail for many missionaries who followed her.

Minnie retired to Scotland, where she lived the last few years of her life.  When she passed away in 1949, her ashes were returned to Kenya and were buried beside her husband.

Feb 13, 2022 Christian History E-mail

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-39351913

 

Mary Slessor

 

Mary Slessor

Mary Mitchell Slessor was born in 1848 in Aberdeen, Scotland, one of four surviving children to a poor working-class family.  Her father was a shoemaker and an alcoholic, and unable to consistently provide for their family.  Her mother was a devout Presbyterian who brought income to the family by working as a weaver.  At times, her mother pushed her out of the house into the streets to escape a drunken beating from her father.  While on the streets, she had to fend off drunks.

By the time she was eleven, she was working from 6AM to 6PM in the mills preparing jute and flax for the weavers.  Eager to improve herself, she signed up for night schooling offered by the factory for the child workers.  When she would nod off in class from exhaustion, she would be forced to stand for the lectures as punishment.

She became a Christian when a woman held her hand near a fire and warned her of Hell.  As she grew older, she began holding Bible classes for the poor children in her area – children she shared a background with.  She organized picnics and ‘fun’ days, raising the eyebrows of “proper” Christians by running races with the children.

During this time, a gang of young men tried to intimidate her.  They slung mud at her and mocked her during her teaching.  At one point, they grabbed her and stood her up.  The leader of the gang whirled a lead weight on a string around, getting closer and closer to her face.  Praying inwardly for strength to stand her ground, Mary faced the threat down until the weight grazer her forehead.  Impressed with her courage, the gang leader made all in his group attend her meetings.  “What is courage, but conquering fear?” she later said.

Presbyterians at this time were very missions-minded.  Letters from missionaries were circulated among churches and read aloud during the service.  A monthly magazine was published called the Missionary Record containing the writings and needs of various missionaries around the world.  When the great Dr Livingstone died, Mary was 27 years old and resolved to follow the legendary missionary’s footsteps in Africa.

Mary immediately began laying the groundwork for a missions trip herself, and a year later boarded the S.S. Ethiopia in August of 1876 headed to what is now Nigeria.  Recalling the effects of alcohol on her family, she was distressed to see the main cargo of the ship was large barrels of whiskey.  She remarked, “Scores of barrels of whiskey, and only one missionary.”

In Nigeria, despite having read up on the culture there, she was shocked at the level of depravity and native superstition in her field.  Life meant little – it was nothing to kill a slave, or a child.  The birth of twins to a family was regarded as an evil omen, dealt with by slaughtering the babies and either killing the mother or running her out of the village.  Matters of guilt or innocence were often determined by having the accused eat poisoned berries of seeing if they survived being immersed in burning oil.  The death of a village elder was accompanied by the human sacrifice of his servants so they would accompany him into the afterlife.

Mary, noted among the people there for her bright red hair and bright blue eyes as much as her quick ability to pick up the local languages, had a tremendous impact among the locals.  She was very active in rescuing twins and their mothers, helping them to see their lives had value in the eyes of Christ.  She ministered to the mothers and children, helping them to see their worth in Christ and helped them acquire vocational skills to take care of their children and themselves.  She adopted a number of orphaned children.  At great risk to herself, she spoke against the dehumanizing practices in the culture and worked to change them, village by village.  Fearlessly, she often ventured alone into remote villages to combat the dehumanizing religion of the area, at one point chasing down a group of masked bandits and ripping the mask off the ringleader to demonstrate their weakness.  She played a major role in stopping or preventing outright wars between villages.

She contracted Malaria more than once, having to return to England on occasion where she was a great inspiration to the church.  Earlier sicknesses of Malaria rendered her body weak later in her life, to the point that she had to be pushed in a homemade wheelchair from village to village.

While at a missionary station in early January of 1915, she fainted after hearing the news of Europe at war.  She was revived, but weakened to the point where she died on January 13^th of that year, age of 64.

A memorial plaque over her grave in Nigeria reads: “In loving memory of Mary Mitchell Slessor.  For thirty-eight years a heroic and devoted missionary chiefly among the up-river tribes of this land.  The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.  They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever.”

 

e-mail from Christian History, 10 January 2021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Slessor

https://infomaryslessor.org/page%202.html

Lott Cary

Lott Cary was born a slave on a plantation in Charles City County, Virginia (southeast of Richmond), in 1780.  His situation was such that his extended family lived together.  His family attended a Baptist church and feared the Lord greatly.  Later in his life, Lott remembered his grandmother Mahala as the one who greatly shaped his faith.

When he was twenty-four years old, Lott’s owner sent him to Richmond to work in a tobacco warehouse.  While there, he began drinking and behaving in ways he was not proud of later.  After two or three years, he began to feel conviction of his sin and was converted in the First Baptist Church after hearing a sermon about Nicodemus.  He was baptized there and, intensely curious about the story of Nicodemus, made arrangements to learn to read so he could study the story himself.

His faith affected his work ethic, his work at the warehouse thrived, and he was promoted to supervisor of the warehouse.  He was often tipped by tobacco buyers and he was allowed to keep and sell extra tobacco.  This money was diligently saved and Lott soon had enough to purchase freedom for himself and his young family.  The warehouse kept him on as a salaried employee.

Lott Cary felt the call to preach and began preaching to slaves around the Richmond area.  People of all races who attended his sermons called them among the most moving they had ever heard.

Feeling an increasing call to go to Africa as a missionary, in 1815 Lott worked with other ministers to form a Baptist society for African missions.  The Society saw the state of Liberia as a starting point for missions to the entire continent of Africa.  They raised funds for a number of years and in 1821 Cary left as co-lead of a team to establish a mission in Monrovia, Liberia, where a number of freed blacks had resettled.  Intending to preach, Cary found himself enmeshed in the political climate and in the practical matters of government – even to matters of training local doctors and to the self-defense of the small city from large bands of bandits and rebels.  All of these duties were performed while he was active as the pastor of several churches in the city.

In 1826, Lott Cary was the acting governor of Liberia but was unfortunately killed with seven other people in an explosion when he was helping to prepare cartridges for the colony’s defense.

His untimely death left a great hole to fill, but because of his efforts in his day, Liberia remains a free nation and the National Missionary Baptist Convention continues to send missionaries around the world.  There is also a large missions organization headquartered in Lanham, MD, named after him which sends multicultural teams into parts of Africa on a short-term basis for purposes of evangelism, health, anti-human trafficking, and disaster response.

https://mbcpathway.com/2021/02/25/lott-cary-former-slave-becomes-first-baptist-missionary-to-africa/

https://www.imb.org/2018/08/28/missionaries-you-should-know-lott-cary/

http://lottcarey.org/

David Livingstone

David Livingston

David Livingston was born in Scotland in 1813.  He was born in a building housing the families of workers of a cotton mill.  He grew, as expected, to work in that same cotton mill – often working 14 hour shifts as a child – but found time to study theology and science on weekends and evenings as he could find the time.  A faithful Congregationalist, he was moved as a young man by an appeal for medical missionaries.  He added medicine to the list of subjects he was studying.

At first he thought to go to China as a missionary, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society for this work.  The Opium Wars of 1839-1842 put an end to that dream, and he was persuaded by the great British Missionary Robert Moffatt to consider Africa as a mission field.  He accepted the call and arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1841 at age 28 to support Rev Moffatt.  Within four years, David married his mentor’s daughter, Mary Moffatt.  They eventually had six children.  David grew restless tending mission stations on the coast, and developed a vision for exploring Africa, desiring to open “God’s Highway” – a planned 1,500 mile route to the interior of Africa to bring “Christianity and civilization” to unreached peoples.  During the course of his missions work, he traveled East to West across Africa, then back again, crossing the Kalahari Desert each way as well.  He was the first recorded European to find Lake Ngami and the beautiful Victoria Falls, which he named for his beloved Queen.

During his trips into the interior of Africa, Dr Livingston was exposed to the slave trade at its source, and was greatly burdened by it.  He wrote of the “inefficient” slave economy, desiring to replace it with the “efficient” economy of capitalism.  He hoped that developing a commercial economy would expose the slave trade to the world and cut off the slave trade at its source.

Dr Livingston spent the next 15 years exploring Africa, keeping detailed notes as to the geography, peoples, and landmarks he saw.  He was very faithful to report his detailed notes to his mission board and eventually returned home to a hero’s welcome in England, finding that the Society publishing the results of his exploration had turned him into a celebrity.  He published a book detailing his mission exploits, and made enough money from that book to fund the rest of his missions work.

He returned to Africa under the sponsorship of the Royal Geographic Society, with the stated desire of solving what was then one of the great mysteries of the world, finding the source of the Nile River.  Practically, he had hoped that this would inspire other British explorers and businessmen to follow his footsteps and begin to open up Africa to commercial and missions work and begin the construction of his “God’s Highway.”  It was during this trip that the extreme hardship resulted in the death of his wife, among many others in his entourage.

It was during this last journey that Dr Livingstone disappeared from the public eye.  Nothing was heard from him for two years – and his disappearance added to his mystique.  It was later learned that David had fallen gravely ill during that time.  In 1871, the New York Herald sent journalist Henry Stanley with instructions to locate Dr Livingstone and tell his story.  Stanley located him in the interior of Africa in October of that year, uttering the famous line (which he admitted to having rehearsed prior to meeting him), “Dr Livingston, I presume?”  Stanley brought food, supplies, and medicines, which had the effect of saving the life of David who was still very ill.

Stanley stayed with David for five months before returning to New York to publish the stories he had recorded.  Livingstone refused Stanley’s pleas to accompany him, insisting on the missions work yet to be done.  It was less than 2 years later, that Dr David Livingstone was found dead, kneeling by his cot in the posture of prayer.  His friends arranged for his body to be brought back to England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey after an arduous nine-month journey, but they first removed his heart and buried them in Africa, in present-day Zambia.

David Livingstone came to Africa when it was called the “Dark Continent” or “The White Man’s Graveyard”.  Contemporary maps of Africa had large blank spots marked “unexplored”.  He suffered many hardships, including the death of his wife, desertion by many friends and fellow missionaries, his own illnesses, opposition from slave traders which sometimes physically threatened him, and the ever-present dangers of Africa – he was mauled by a lion once, which permanently damaged his left arm.  Despite this, he redrew the map of Africa, helped to expose the horrors of the slave trade for what it was in his day, and established many missions works in the interior of Africa.

His tombstone in Westminster Abbey reads, “Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade.”  One present-day author likened him to a mixture of Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/missionaries/david-livingstone.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Livingstone/The-Zambezi-expedition