1800 AD

1801 John Theodorus van der Kemp moves from ministering among the Xhosa to ministering to the Khoikhoi, both in South Africa; earlier he had helped found the Netherlands Missionary Society.

1802 Henry Martyn hears Charles Simeon speak about William Carey’s work in India and resolves to become a missionary himself; he will sail for India in 1805.

1803 The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society votes to publish a missionary magazine; now known as The American Baptist, this periodical is the oldest religious magazine in the United States.

1804 The British and Foreign Bible Society is formed; the Church Missionary Society enters Sierra Leone.

1805 Brothers Abraham and Christian Albrecht, from the London Missionary Society, are the first Christian missionaries to come to Namibia.

1806 Haystack prayer meeting is conducted at Williams College; five students gather in a field to discuss the spiritual welfare of Asian people. Out of this prayer meeting many Protestant missions were born, including the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, along with the missions of the United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Student Volunteer Movement. Thousands of church planters, evangelists, and Bible translators have been sent out due to this prayer meeting. The first Protestant missionaries, with the English Wesleyan Mission, arrive in Haiti.  

1807 The first Protestant missionary to China, Robert Morrison, begins work in Guangzhou (formerly called Canton) in China.

1808 The London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews is founded.

1809 The National Bible Society of Scotland is organized.  

1811 English Wesleyans enter Sierra Leone.

1812 Adoniram Judson, arrives in India and soon goes to Burma; Henry Martin completes the first translation of the New Testament into Persian.

1813 The Methodists form the Wesleyan Missionary Society.

1814 The American Baptist Foreign Mission Society is established; the Netherlands Bible Society is founded. Four Native Americans from beyond the Rocky Mountains come east to St. Louis, Missouri, seeking information about the “palefaces’ religion” because they believe it will give them increased power for their battles with other native tribes. The first missionaries arrive in New Zealand, led by Samuel Marsden.

1815 The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions opens work on Ceylon; the African-American Baptist Churches found the Richmond African Missionary Society, which sent missionaries to West Africa.

1816 The American Bible Society is established.

1817 James Thompson starts distributing Bibles throughout Latin America. 

1818 Missionary work begins in Madagascar, with the king’s reluctant approval. The Bible is published in Pashtu (a language of modern-day Afghanistan).

1819 Missionary physician John Scudder joins the Ceylon Mission; Wesleyan Methodists start work in Madras, India. Reginald Heber writes the words to the missionary classic, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains.”

1820 Hiram Bingham goes to Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands).

1821 African-American Lott Carey, a Baptist missionary, sails with twenty-eight colleagues from Norfolk, Virginia, to Sierra Leone; the Protestant Episcopal Church Mission Board is established.  The New Testament is published in Nepali. All of mainland South and Central America are freed from Spanish rule. Brazil would gain independence from Portugal in 1822. (Future)

1823 Scottish Missionary Society workers come to Mumbai (known then as Bombay), India; Robert Morrison ordains Liang Fa, the first Chinese Protestant evangelist. The American Board of Missions sends African-American Betsy Stockton to Hawaii; she thus becomes the first single- woman missionary in modern-missions history.

1825 George Boardman goes to Burma.

1826 The American Bible Society sends the first Bible shipment to Mexico.

1827 Missionary Lancelot Threlkeld reports in The Monitor that he is “advancing rapidly” in his efforts to disseminate Holy Scripture among indigenous Australians of the Hunter and Shoalhaven rivers.

1828 The Basel Mission begins work in the Christiansborg area of Accra, Ghana; Karl Gutzlaff, of the Netherlands Missionary Society, lands in Bangkok, Thailand.  

1829 George Mueller, a native of Prussia, goes to England as a missionary to the Jews.

1830 Church of Scotland missionary Alexander Duff arrives in Kolkata; William Swan, missionary to Siberia, writes Letters on Missions, which is the first Protestant comprehensive treatment of missions theory and practice.  

1831 American Congregational missionaries come to Thailand, withdrawing in 1849 without a single convert; the Trinitarian Bible Society is formed when they separate from the British and Foreign Bible Society because of controversies about the inclusion of the Apocrypha.

1832 John Williams commissions Teava, former cannibal and pioneer Pacific Islander missionary, to work on the Samoan island of Manono.

1833 The Baptist work in Thailand starts with John Taylor Jones; American Methodist missionary Melville Box arrives in Liberia. The Free Will Baptist Foreign Missionary Society begins work in India. William Carey translates the Bible into Bengali.

1834 The American Presbyterian Mission opens work in India in the Punjab; Dr. Peter Parker is sent to China from the United States as the first medical missionary.

1835 The Rhenish Missionary Society starts work among the Dayaks on Borneo (Indonesia); Bishop of Calcutta Daniel Wilson calls India’s caste system “a cancer.”

1836 Plymouth Brethren begin work in Madras, India; George Müller starts his work with orphans in Bristol, England. The Colonial Missionary Society is formed. Adnorim  Judson translates the New Testament into Burmese.

1837 William Carey translates the New Testament into Hindi. Board of Foreign Missions, Presbyterian Church in the USA is established “to aid in the conversion of the world . . . every member of this church is a member for life of said society and bound to do all in his power for the accomplishment of this objective.”

1838 The Bible is published in Tahitian.

1839 The entire Bible is published in the language of Tahiti; three French missionaries are martyred in Korea. English Protestant missionaries are murdered on Erromango (Vanuatu, in the South Pacific).

1840 David Livingstone is in present-day Malawi (Africa) with the London Missionary Society; American Presbyterians enter Thailand and labor for eighteen years before making their first Thai convert. The Irish Presbyterian Missionary Society is established.  

1841 The Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society is founded as the first medical mission society in Europe; Welsh Methodists begin working among the Khasi people of India.

1842 The Treaty of Nanking opens China.

1843 Baptist John Taylor Jones translates the New Testament into the Thai language.  

1844 German Ludwig Krapf starts work in Mombasa on the Kenya coast; George Williams forms the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).  

1845 The Southern Baptist Convention mission organization is founded.

1846 The London Missionary Society establishes work on Niue, a South Pacific island that Westerners had named the “savage island.”

1847 Presbyterian William Burns goes to China, and translates The Pilgrim’s Progress into Chinese.  

1848 Charles Forman goes to Punjab; he started a school and helped shape the educational system of the region. German missionaries Johannes Rebmann and Johann Ludwig Krapf arrive at Kilimanjaro. Their story about a snow-covered peak near the equator was initially scoffed at. Karl Marx publishes his Communist Manifesto. (Future)

1849 Just weeks after arriving on the Melanesian island of Aneityum (or Anatom), missionary John Geddie writes in his journal: “In the darkness, degradation, pollution and misery that surrounds me, I will look forward in the vision of faith to the time when some of these poor islanders will unite in the triumphant song of ransomed souls, ‘Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood.’” David Livingstone starts his missionary explorations in Central Africa to open the way for “Christianity, commerce and civilization.” (Future)

1850 The Church Missionary Society begins work in Pakistan by establishing schools and hospitals and distributing Scripture.

1851 Allen Gardiner and his six missionary colleagues die of exposure and starvation at Patagonia, on the southern tip of South America, when a resupply ship from England arrives six months late.

1853 The Hermannsburg Missionary Society—which Louis Harms founded in 1849—finishes training its first group of young missionaries, who are sent to Africa on a ship (the Kandaze) that had been built entirely from donations.

1854 Henry Venn, secretary of the Church Missionary Society, sets out the ideal of self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating churches; Hudson Taylor arrives in China.

1855 Henry Steinhauer is ordained as a Canadian Methodist missionary to North American Indians and posted to Lac La Biche, Alberta; his missionary work had actually started fifteen years earlier, in 1840, when he was assigned to Lac La Pluie for assisting in translating, teaching, and interpreting the Ojibwa and Cree languages. John Coleridge Patteson sails for the South Seas.

1856 Presbyterians start work in Colombia, with the arrival of Henry Pratt.

1857 The Bible is translated into the Tswana language (spoken in southern Africa).  

1858 John G. Paton begins work in New Hebrides (part of modern-day Vanuatu); Elizabeth Freeman is martyred in India. The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society starts work in western Sumatra (Indonesia). David Livingstone’s book, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, is published.

1859 Protestant missionaries arrive in Japan after centuries of isolation.

1860 The United Lutheran Church begins its work in Liberia; Liverpool Missionary Conference.  Cyrus Hamlin lays the groundwork for establishing Robert College in Constantinople.

1861 Protestant Shtundism arises in the village of Osnova of modern-day Ukraine; the Shtundists were peasant groups who focused on piety and evangelism. Sarah Doremus founds the Women’s Union Missionary Society as an interdenominational organization to send out single women as missionaries to Asia. The Rhenish Mission goes to Indonesia under Ludwig Nommensen.

1862 The Paris Evangelical Missionary Society opens work in Senegal.

1863 Robert Moffat, a missionary to Africa with the London Missionary Society, publishes his book, Rivers of Water in a Dry Place, An Account of the Introduction of Christianity into South Africa, and of Mr. Moffat’s Missionary Labours.

1864 Baptists enter Argentina.

1865 James Hudson Taylor founds the China Inland Mission; James Laidlaw Maxwell plants the first viable church in Taiwan. William Booth establishes the Salvation Army in England. The first Protestant missionaries arrive in Korea.

1866 Theodore Jonas Meyer (1819-1894), a converted Jew serving as a Presbyterian missionary in Italy, nurses those dying from a cholera epidemic until he himself falls prey to the disease; barely surviving, he becomes a peacemaker between Catholics and Protestants. Robert Thomas, the first Protestant martyr in Korea, is beheaded, giving a Bible to his executioner.

1867 Methodists start work in Argentina; the Scripture Union is established to reach children with the gospel. Lars Skrefsrud and Hans Barreson begin working among the Santals of India.

1868 Robert Bruce goes to Iran; Canadian Baptist missionary Americus Timpany begins work among the Telugu people in India.

1869 The first Methodist women’s missionary magazine, The Heathen Women’s Friend, begins publication.

1870 Clara Swain—the very first female-missionary medical doctor—arrives at Bareilly, India.

1871 George Leslie Mackay plants a church in northern Taiwan; George Patteson is martyred.

1872 The first All-India Missionary Conference is held, with 136 participants; Calvin Mateer decides that all instruction in his schools in China should be in Chinese, so that the education will be most helpful to the future of the church in China. (Shandong)

1873 The Regions beyond Missionary Union is founded in London in connection with the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions; the initial Scripture portion (Gospel of Luke) is translated into a language of the Philippines (Pangasinan). Lottie Moon is appointed as missionary to China. Father Damien—a Catholic priest—arrives in Molakai, a Pacific island where only people afflicted with leprosy live.

1874 Lord Radstock’s initial visit to St. Petersburg and the start of an evangelical awakening among the St. Petersburg nobility occur; Albert Sturges initiates the Interior Micronesia Mission, in the Mortlock Islands, under the leadership of Micronesian students from Ohwa.

1875 The Foreign Christian Missionary Society is organized, with Isaac Errett as president; it serves a network of churches within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Church of Christ movements.

1876 A rusty ocean steamer arrives at a Calabar River port in what is now Nigeria in September; that part of Africa is known as the White Man’s Grave. The only woman on board that ship is twenty-nine-year-old Mary Slessor, a missionary.

1877 James Chalmers goes to New Guinea. The first missionaries arrive in Uganda from the Church Missionary Society after King Mutesa requests that they come to his kingdom after hearing the gospel preached by Henry Stanley, a British explorer and journalist.

1878 A mass movement to Christ takes place in Ongole, India; the Evangelical Association Missionary Society is formed.

1879 H. F. Reynolds enters the ministry; he becomes the missionary secretary of the new Church of the Nazarene in 1907.

1880 Woman missionary doctor Fanny Butler goes to India; A. B. Simpson launches the  missionary periodical, The Gospel in All Lands. The New Testament is published in Japanese.

1881 Methodist work in Lahore, Pakistan, starts in the wake of revivals under Bishop William Taylor; the North Africa Mission (now Arab World Ministries) is founded on Edward Glenny’s work in Algeria.

1882 James Gilmour—London Missionary Society missionary to Mongolia—returns home to England for a furlough, during which he published Among the Mongols. It is so well-written that one critic wrote, “Robinson Crusoe has turned missionary, lived years in Mongolia, and wrote a book about it.” Pertaining to the author, the critic explained, “If ever on earth there lived a man who kept the law of Christ, and could give proof of it, and be absolutely unconscious that he was giving it to them, it is this man whom the Mongols called ‘our Gilmour.’” Florence Young begins ministering to laborers on her brother’s South Seas plantation.

1883 The Salvation Army enters West Pakistan; A. B. Simpson organizes the Missionary Union for the Evangelization of the World. The first Missionary Training College classes are held in New York City. Zaire Christian and Missionary Alliance mission field opens.

1884 The Jewish Mission of the Free Church of Scotland sends David Torrance as a medical missionary to Palestine; Protestant missionaries arrive in Korea.

1885 Horace Underwood, Presbyterian missionary, and Henry Appenzellar, Methodist missionary, arrive in Korea; Scottish Ion Keith-Falconer goes to Aden on the Arabian peninsula.  “Cambridge Seven”—C. T. Studd, M. Beauchamp, W. W. Cassels, D. E. Hoste, S. P. Smith, A. T. Podhill-Turner, and C. H. Polhill-Turner—come to China as missionaries. Ugandan troops kill Anglican Bishop James Hannigton and the Africans traveling with him.

1886 The Student Volunteer Movement is launched as one hundred university and seminary students at Moody’s conference grounds at Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, sign the Princeton Pledge, which says: “I purpose, God willing, to become a foreign missionary.”

1887 William Cassidy, a Toronto medical doctor, is ordained as the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s first missionary preacher; he unfortunately died from smallpox en route to China, but his death has been called the “spark that ignited the Alliance missionary blaze.”

1888 Jonathan Goforth sails to China; the Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions is officially organized, with John R. Mott as chairman and Robert Wilder as traveling secretary. The movement motto, coined by Wilder, is, “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” Scripture Gift Mission (now Lifewords) is founded.

1889 Samuel Moffett sails from the United States for Korea, and establishes a Presbyterian Mission there; North Africa Mission enters Tripoli as the first Protestant mission in Libya.

1890 C. I. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible, establishes the Central American Mission; the Scandinavian Alliance (now the Evangelical Alliance Mission) is formed. Methodist Charles Gabriel writes the missionary song, “Send the Light.” John L. Nevius visits Korea and calls for “self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating churches.”

1891 Samuel Zwemer goes to Arabia. Helen Chapman sails for the Congo (Zaire); she marries a Danish missionary, William Rasmussen, whom she met during the voyage.

1892 Redcliffe Missionary Training College is founded in Chiswick (London).

1893 Eleanor Chestnut goes to China as a Presbyterian medical missionary.  

1894 The Soatanana Revival, which begins in Madagascar, lasts for more than ninety years.

1895 Peter Cameron Scott forms Africa Inland Mission; the Japan Bible Society is established. Roland Allen is sent as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to its North China Mission.

1896 Ödön Scholtz founds the first Hungarian Lutheran foreign-mission periodical, Külmisszió.

1897 The Presbyterian Church (USA) begins work in Venezuela.

1898 Theresa Huntington leaves her New England home for the Middle East; she will work seven years as an American Board missionary in Elazig (Kharput), in the Ottoman Empire. Her letters home will be published in a book titled, Great Need over the Water. Missionary W. S. Fleming and the first Hmu convert, Pan Xiushan, are murdered in China. Thirty-two Christian inquirers are seized and beheaded along with them. Eight Protestant denominations divide up places of ministry in the Philippines, so they will not start churches in the same areas, while some went untouched.

1899 James Rodgers arrives in the Philippines with the Presbyterian Mission; the Central American Mission enters Guatemala. Gideons International is organized in Wisconsin.