February is Black History month. Black History month was created to bring attention to historic contributions that African Americans have made to the United States. There are thousands of people whose stories remain unknown, but I recently read about one African American woman who bravely moved to Africa to tell others about Jesus. I had never before heard her story, so I want to share it and the story of another former slave who answered God’s call to missions. These women not only made important contributions to the United States but also to the kingdom of God.
Betsey Stockton: First Single Female Missionary
Betsey Stockton was born a slave. As a young girl, she was given to the wife of the president of what is now known as Princeton University. Her owners exposed her to Christian teaching, and when she was a teenager and now an indentured servant, she was allowed to attend evening classes at Princeton. When a religious revival broke out on campus, Betsey, too, became a Christian.
Her owners then granted her complete freedom, but she remained in the household as a paid servant until, convicted that all Christians are supposed to share Jesus with the world, she made plans to be a missionary. She was given the opportunity to go with a group to the Sandwich Islands, now called Hawaii. She saved her money, her employers funded the rest, and in 1823, she became the first single, female missionary ever sent from the United States.
Betsey was only able to stay in Hawaii for three years, but in that time, she learned Hawaiian and started a school for the children of commoners, something that locals had never allowed before. She taught Bible, algebra, history, English, and even Latin, and by 1826, she had provided an education for over 8,000 children.
Back in the US, Betsey started several more schools for disadvantaged children and eventually settled in the town of Princeton where she helped to found both a church and the town’s only school for black children.
Maria Fearing: Missionary to Africa at the Age of 56
Maria Fearing was also born enslaved in Alabama where she was a nanny and house slave for thirty years. As a child and young adult, she, too, heard Bible stories and adventures of missionaries in Africa from her owner and determined to one day to go to Africa to tell people about God herself. Although she was living in physical slavery, she had heard from other slaves about the freedom that God gives.
When she was freed at the end of the Civil War, she supported herself with her domestic skills, and six years later, financed her own education. She started elementary school at the age of 33. When she had finished ninth grade, she began teaching in a rural school and even purchased her own home, something very unusual for a black, single woman then.
Several years later, she attended a talk given by a Presbyterian missionary to Africa. She remembered the missionary tales told to her in her youth, and in response, Maria volunteered, at the age of 56, to become a missionary in Congo.
Initially considered too old to be a missionary, she financed her mission herself, mostly through the sale of her home. In 1894, she arrived on the shore of Congo, then traveled with four other missionaries 1,200 more miles inland. The land she arrived in was filled with violence and hardship. The king of Belgium owned the land, and his troops abused the native people to force them to work harder; and the Arab slave trade was strong as well.
Maria soon learned the language and helped translate the Bible. She spent the next twenty years sharing the gospel and teaching young girls, many that she herself had bought out of slavery. She founded a home for girls that housed forty orphans and a school where Maria taught girls real-life skills and the stories of Jesus.
Maria retired at the age of 78 yet still taught Sunday school in Alabama until her death at the age of 99.
Despite experiencing what must have been troubling, confusing behavior by Christians (slaveholding), both Maria Fearing and Betsey Stockton obeyed God’s call. With great desire and sacrifice, they shared God’s love and grace with others and made a lasting impact on the lives of others.
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God bless you. Stay hopeful! ❤️
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