Martha Foster Crawford

Martha Elizabeth Foster Crawford

Martha Elizabeth Foster Crawford (1830-1909) was an American missionary to China from 1852 till 1909.^[1] She was the first foreign missionary from Alabama.^[2] Her parents were the deacon, John Lovelace Savidge Foster, and Susanna Hollifield Foster.^[3] In 1851, shortly before she became a missionary and left for China, she married Tarleton Perry Crawford, whom she had known for three weeks. They arrived in Shanghai in March 1952.^[4] During their marriage, they adopted two children.^[1]

Biography

Martha Elizabeth Foster was born in Jasper County, Georgia, January 28, 1830. She was one of ten children, six boys and four girls. While a child, the family removed to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She was educated in the common schools and Messopotamia Girls' Seminary at Eutaw, Alabama. She prepared herself for the occupation of schoolteacher. At the age of 15, she was converted, having been the child of a deeply religious family of Baptist faith. At 19 years of age, Foster expressed a great desire to become a foreign missionary. About this time, one Tarlton P. Crawford went to Richmond, Virginia, to be examined and secure appointment by missionary board to serve in foreign fields. He expressed a desire to find and marry some woman who wanted to be a missionary. The next day, the secretary received a letter asking the board to appoint Miss Foster to Chinese missionary work. The secretary showed the letter to Mr. Crawford. He set out at once to find the young lady. He found her teaching in a neighboring village, boarding at the village hotel, kept by a Baptist, who introduced the two. In three weeks, they were married. Before leaving for China, they visited 50 churches of the Baptist association, upon which they depended for support.^[5]

They sailed from New York, November 17, 1851, via Cape of Good Hope. After a rough passage, they landed in Hong Kong in 102 days, from there, going up the coast of China to Shanghai, by schooner, in 17 days. The mission board bore all expenses. At the end of 12 years, the Crawfords went into Shantung province. They labored there for 30 years with two other missionaries. In 1893, they went to Tai An Foo at the foot of Tai San.^[5]

Crawford wrote several books and diaries. Zao yang fan shu (Western Cookery; 1866) was the first Chinese-language Western cookbook published in Shanghai.^[6]

Selected works

• 18??, Shan-Tung province : our North-China mission field
• Martha Foster Crawford diaries, 1846-1881
• 1866, 造洋飯書. Zao yang fan shu
• 1872, A story of three little girls
• 1883, Discouragements and encouragements of the missionary situation in China : an excellent work for distribution by mission societies
• 1888, A call to north China

References

Bibliography

• American Presbyterian Mission (1872). The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal (Public domain ed.). American Presbyterian Mission Press. 
• Flynt, Wayne; Berkley, Gerald W. (January 1997). Taking Christianity to China: Alabama Missionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1850-1950. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-0833-9. 
• Gougar, Helen Mar Jackson (1905). Forty Thousand Miles of World Wandering (Public domain ed.). Monarch Book Company. 
• ProQuest (2008). Careers Across Color Lines: American Women Missionaries and Race Relations, 1870--1920. ProQuest. ISBN 978-0-549-66995-1. 
• Swislocki, Mark (2009). Culinary Nostalgia: Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-6012-6. 

Attribution

• This article incorporates text from a work in the public domain: H. M. J. Gougar's Forty Thousand Miles of World Wandering (1905)