American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions letter received (MSS SC 2197)

The first five missionaries sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were ordained on February 8, 1812, in the Tabernacle Church, in Salem, Massachusetts.
Photo courtesy of The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a new digitized collection: American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions letter received (MSS SC 2197). The item is a five page unsigned handwritten letter dated October 2, 1833, to Reverend D. Green, secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, from the chairman of a committee in Jacksonville, Illinois, requesting the Board’s aid in outfitting a missionary group to the “Indians West of the Rocky Mountains.” This letter is accompanied by a two page manuscript copy of a petition titled “Incipient measures in relation to the establishment of a mission,” with resolutions passed at a public meeting in Jacksonville on September 2, 1833, and seeks to implement suggestions in the letter.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations.