Woman's Boards of the Congregational Church

Woman's Boards of the Congregational Church was an American Congregational confederation of cooperating, independent women's missionary Boards. Each was associated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). The four Boards were: Woman's Board of Missions, Boston (organized 1868; No. 1 Congregational House, Boston, Massachusetts), Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior (organized 1868; No. 59 Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois), Woman's Board of Missions of the Pacific (organized 1873; San Francisco, California), and the Woman's Board of Missions of the Pacific Islands (organized 1871; Honolulu, Hawaii, Sandwich Islands).^[1][a] The first three of these Boards cooperated with the ABCFM in Mexico, Spain, the Turkish Empire, India, Ceylon, China, Japan, Africa (East, West, and South), and the Micronesian Islands; the fourth Board cooperated in the Hawaiian Islands and in Micronesia.^[1]

Their special department was work for women and children. Taken together, they supported nearly two hundred unmarried women at a time who were laboring in evangelistic, educational, and medical lines with missionaries of the ABCFM, receiving appointment, as did others, by the Prudential Committee. They demonstrated great efficiency in organization, grouping their local Auxiliaries into Branches, and reaching a large constituency and kindling zeal in missionary work. Life and Light was their common organ, published at the Congregational House, Boston.^[2]

There were several positive results of this cooperation. In 1871, there was a great disparity in the church-membership of all the ABCFM Missions in favor of men; in 1891, the number of men and women was very evenly divided. Then their schools for girls (exclusive of those taken by the Presbyterian Church in 1870) numbered: boarding-schools 11, pupils 350; common-schools 352, pupils 3,103. In 1891, the corresponding facts were: boarding-schools 53, pupils 3,300; common-schools 9:30, pupils 34,694. In 1871, such a thing as a dispensary for women was unheard of, and the few higher school buildings were inadequate; in 1891, the largest of these Boards has more than US$200,000 invested in such Christian monuments. In 1871, the American Board had 43 single women in missionary service-a larger number than had the ten other leading societies of America and Great Britain combined. During its 57 years of previous history, it had sent out 170 single ladies. In 1891, it enrolled 173 in a single year.^[1]

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