Ancestors At Work
Julie Peakman discovers more about our forebears who travelled around the world to spread their faith
Did your relation hear the call to work as a missionary?
Over 200 years ago, Britain sent out thousands of missionaries to countries all over the world. Some of the first Protestant missionaries and their wives went to Tahiti in the South Pacific, landing on 5 March 1797 on the ship Duff. Many of your ancestors who followed them would have had the same hopes and aspirations. The Missionary Society (renamed the London Missionary Society in 1818) opened two years later with the intention “to spread the knowledge of Christ among heathen and other unenlightened nations”. These missions would spread out to reach China, Madagascar, South and South-East Asia, Southern and Central Africa, North America and the West Indies.
Your missionary forbears might have belonged to any one of the missionary groups set up with backing of the churches in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; other examples include the Methodist Missionary, the Presbyterian Church of English Foreign Missions, and the Baptist Missionary Society. Missionaries came from all sorts of backgrounds – teachers, foundry workers and bricklayers included. Formal qualifications were not required, but they spent a year or so training in Bible studies before taking an uncomfortable voyage lasting many months. Sea travel would have been a new experience
for most of them, and they would have suffered seasickness and diarrhoea in dangerously insanitary conditions.
Missionaries were usually sent out in small groups of single men with a few married couples. Your ancestors landing in tropical climes would have sweltered, not least because they rarely changed their thick English dress to suit the hot and humid climate.
They would have taken crucial domestic items such as crockery, cutlery, linens and clothes, along with Bibles and religious tracts. They may also have brought a trunk of trinkets and spare household items to win the favour of indigenous people – mirrors, scissors, combs, pots, blankets, nails and axes.
Hostile Reception
Nevertheless, many missionaries suffered antagonism from those they were trying to convert, and the early missions were often set against a background of intertribal wars, where kidnap and murder were common and whole villages were burnt to the ground. Over the years missionaries would suffer death and disease, and see brutality on an unprecedented scale. One example was Rev John Williams, who landed in the Cook Islands in 1821. He created a settlement and, at first, the islanders were friendly and curious. Once they realised that these strangers were here to stay – and that more were arriving – disturbances erupted. Chapels and missionary houses were set on fire, and fighting erupted. The missionary group managed to rebuild their homes, but attacks and theft left them in a state of constant vigilance. They had other horrors to contend with too, such as dysentery and infestations of rats. Those who survived continued to hold services, encouraging the local people to attend church and convert, then spread the word themselves – often more effectively. More
‘The attempts to “civilise” the indigenous people came with a disregard for local culture’
missionaries were often sent out as reinforcements, and would fan out to neighbouring areas.
By definition, missionaries were convinced of their moral rectitude, and fuelled by the belief that theirs was a superior nation. Their attempts to ‘civilise’ the indigenous people came with a disregard (however unintentional it may have been) for the local culture. As the 20th century progressed, the nature of the missions took on an extra meaning – bringing empire-building into uncharted territories. When your missionary forbearers landed in South Africa, Great Britain had already taken over the Cape of Good Hope – the colony had been annexed by the British in 1806. They may have been inspired by Rev John Campbell, a minister of the London Missionary Society (LMS). Between 1812 and 1822, he travelled thousands of miles in wild country, writing about the local traditions of the people he observed. His books were very influential back home, as were the lectures of LMS missionary David Livingstone. The Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, founded c1857 in response to his pleas, was backed by the Anglican- Catholic church members of the universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, Durham and Dublin. It became prominent in Zanzibar and Nyasaland (now part of Malawi), and undertook the training of African priests. However, although he was a great explorer, Livingstone did not have the temperament to be a good missionary and probably only converted one person.
Culture Shock
Some of your missionary ancestors may have gone to India. Baptist preacher George Gogerly from the LMS worked in Calcutta. He complained bitterly that the native women were kept ignorant and servile, waiting on the men at mealtimes but never sharing food with them, eating the leftovers, and bearing a houseful of children. He lamented: “The evils to which the females in India are subject are many and severe.” In areas such as India, where wealthy families practised female seclusion and sexual segregation, male missionaries used Christian women to bring the gospel to girls and women. The missionaries’ wives and daughters infiltrated Indian homes, to introduce the women to western education and convert them to Christianity.
Although the wives of male missionaries were active as educators and mission workers in early settlements, they increasingly took up the role of missionary themselves, founding schools and training teachers. Women had been excluded from preaching by all of the mainstream British Protestant sects at the time that they set up their foreign missionary societies. However, in 1821 Baptist missionary William Ward gained the agreement of the Ladies’ Committee of the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) to raise funds to send the first single British woman to Calcutta as a Christian educator of ‘heathen’ girls. Some foreign missionary societies became more open to the idea of employing single women to develop Christian educational work among women and girls.
Now your female forebears who wanted to become missionaries began to find their path easier, and the Women’s Missionary Association (WMA) was founded in 1878 after Catherine Maria Ricketts was sent to China as the first single female missionary. After 1925, women were given equal representation on the Foreign Missions Commission Executive.
Missionaries still exist today. Evangelical groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints aim to bring Bibles and the Christian message to every ethnic group in the world.