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CHAPTER 7. From Missionary-hens to “an entirely new line”: Women’s Support for Missions
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IN May of 1823, young Peter Jones and his half-sister Polly attended a Methodist camp meeting at Ancaster, near Hamilton. Peter was the son of a Mississauga First Nation mother and a government surveyor, who was himself the son of a Welsh emigrant. First Polly was converted. Then her prayers joined those of others, and soon they were answered and Peter Jones became Methodism’s first Mississauga convert.1 The Methodists, led by William Case, had only recently begun to work among native people in Upper Canada. As Jones and a few other converts became missionaries themselves, interest in the work increased. Probably in 1827, Case brought Eliza Barnes from New England to labour in the new missions.2 In this early surge of missionary activity, Methodist women found a cause to which they would devote themselves with great energy and effectiveness. Early Missionary Societies Barnes taught and preached, but she also travelled to raise support for her work. Her destinations included New England, New York, Philadelphia , and Baltimore. She received assistance from the Dorcas Societies that women organized in churches there, and she and other Canadian missionaries encouraged the native women to band together in a similar way. Barnes obtained materials that the women used to make articles to be sold at charity bazaars.3 By 1832, one of the groups had raised seventy dollars. It was anticipated that the women would “apply it towards the establishment and support of a new school among some of the destitute tribes of Indians.”4 Native women were, themselves, organized supporters of missions. Some women in Canada’s towns and villages were also organizing. In the summer of 1830, the York Female Missionary Society presented Notes to chapter 7 start on page 266 139 From Missionary-hens to “an entirely new line”: Women’s Support for Missions CHAPTER 7 its second Annual Report, and the Christian Guardian stated that “a number of female Missionary Societies have been established in this Province.”5 These organizations, however, left few traces, though there are brief records of a missionary society organized by the women of Matilda, in Upper Canada, in 1833.6 Best documented is the Cramahe Female Missionary Society, founded near Colborne, also in Upper Canada. It was organized in about 1827, at the time when mission work was opening up in this region. Twelve times between 1831 and 1843 the society publicized its work in the Guardian.7 One report expressed hope for “increased ardor among its members, remembering that as the ocean is composed of drops, so are the wide extended operations of Parent Societies chiefly dependent upon the individual activity of those who form the Auxiliaries.”8 The group functioned as an auxiliary to the church’s missionary society , sponsoring an annual missionary meeting at which there were addresses and subscription lists, and sending out its managers to collect funds after these meetings. Furthermore, the group took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the denominational newspaper to advance the cause of missions, and many of the women’s reports employed stirring rhetoric. Thus, the local women extended the influence of their society, bringing to the consciousness of many Methodist readers “the thrilling importance of the Missionary cause.”9 In 1839 and 1840, the writer noted the use of missionary boxes by several chil140 THE MISSIONARY MOVEMENT William Case and Eliza Barnes Case. The United Church/Victoria University Archives, Toronto, 76.001P/937 N. [52.90.181.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:50 GMT) dren, and in 1842, the society’s collection included the proceeds of a small bazaar.10 Readers learned in 1843 that “the frigid temperature both of the weather and the ‘times’ has not entirely congealed the Missionary spirit of the Cramahe Branch Society,” and the sum collected was “a little in advance of last year.”11 The sombre mood of the report proved prophetic, for this was the last communication from the group. Later women’s missionary societies would use similar methods to raise both money for missions and awareness of the missionary enterprise, but the Cramahe association did not persist to become part of that later movement. In the early period when missions to native peoples were nearby and interest was high, women in Cramahe and elsewhere organized in support of this work, fired with the denomination’s optimism concerning Indian missions in the 1820s and 1830s. But, as John Webster Grant has stated, “By mid-century the enterprise [of Indian missions] had lost...