The Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society was organized Feb. 1, 1877, to aid in spreading the gospel and to Christianize homes by means of house-to-house visitation and by missions and schools with special reference to exceptional populations in the United States, and among neighboring countries. The missionary training school was organized Sept. 5, 1881, and located at the headquarters of the society, now in Chicago. The same year records the first issue of the monthly organ, Tidings, which has grown from a four-page circular to a thirty-two-page magazine, with a monthly circulation of 13,500 copies. The training school has enrolled 518 students. The Society supports also two training schools for negro workers—Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., and the Caroline Bishop School in Dallas, Texas. It has employed on its own fields 159 missionaries among foreign populations in this country from Europe, Indians, Negroes, Chinese, Syrians (from Asia), Mexicans, Cubans, Porto Ricans and Americans.
The missionaries report, for the year, besides work along many other lines, 80,635 visits in homes. During the twenty-four years the visits reported aggregate 1,152,950, and from the headquarters of the Society have gone 6,478,544 pages of literature. The total cash receipts have been $1,034,104. Besides providing for its own distinctive work, the Society has aided the American Baptist Home Missionary Society from 1882 until 1901 to an extent represented by a total of $91,288.
Figures have a certain value, but the best fruit is seen in the results of the work of the missionaries on the fields, through the visits in homes, women's meetings, children's meetings, industrial schools, parents' conferences, Bible bands, fireside schools, training classes, and the circulation of pure, wholesome literature. Through this womanly ministry uncounted lives have been transformed and a multitude of abodes have become Christian homes. There are 2,807 auxiliaries and about 60,000 members.
The Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society was organized Nov. 14, 1878, for the evangelization of the women among the freed people, the heathen, immigrants and the new settlements of the West, and for evangelizing and educating the women and children in any part of North America. The amount raised during the last year was $38,000; fifty-seven teachers, missionaries and Bible women are supported among colored people, Indians, Mexicans, Mormons, Chinese, Alaskans and French Catholics.
The Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society was organized June 12, 1873, to conduct home and foreign missions. This is believed to be the only Woman's Missionary Society (with possibly the exception of the Christian and the Friends') which from the beginning has been entirely independent and not an auxiliary organization. It has furnished eleven women missionaries for India, one of whom is a professor in the Theological School and two are physicians, and supports a large number of schools, many native and Bible women and extensive zenana work. Besides this it aids all other women missionaries of its denominational conference board by annual appropriations for their local work among women and children at the various stations occupied by Free Baptists. The Rhode Island Kindergarten Hall, the Widows' Home and the Sinclair Orphanage, all located at Benares, province of Orissa, India, are the property of this society.
Its home missionary work is connected with Storer College, Harper's Ferry, W. Va., to which it has furnished thirteen teachers, besides contributing largely to the erection and equipment of two of the main buildings. Its receipts have been about $200,000. It has a permanent fund of about $42,000.
The society has twenty-five State organizations, others in Canada and India, with between 8,000 and 9,000 members.
The Woman's Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions of the Southwest was organized at St. Louis in April, 1877; originally to create and foster a practical and intelligent interest in the spiritual condition of women and children in our own land and in heathen lands. Since the close of its fourteenth year its work has been for foreign missions only, being one of the seven woman's auxiliaries to the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian church in the United States of America. It has given to the cause of missions $249,618, and has had missionaries, as teachers or physicians, in India, China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Persia and South America. The record of their work has been of a nature sufficiently encouraging to warrant continued and larger support. The Board has 605 branches or auxiliary societies and 13,776 members.
The Woman's Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church was organized in December, 1878, to establish and maintain Christian schools among those near home. It has eleven stations in Alaska, eighteen among the Indians, twenty-seven among the Mexicans, thirty-one among the Mormons, forty among the mountaineers, six among the foreigners in this country, five among the Porto Ricans, making a total of 138, with 425 missionaries and teachers and 9,337 pupils.
The Board has secured to the Presbyterian church $750,000 worth of property and has expended about $3,500,000 since organization. Two magazines are published, the Home Mission Monthly, and Over Sea and Land for the young, the latter jointly with the Foreign Societies. It has about 5,000 auxiliary societies with about 100,000 members.