In March 1871, Lottie received a letter from her cousin Pleasant Moon. Pleasant had moved out of Virginia and had become a successful merchant in Cartersville, Georgia. In his letter he told Lottie that he and several other businessmen in town had set up a board of trustees for a girls school. They had many students waiting to attend, and they had even picked a building to hold the school in. All they needed now were teachers.
Lottie’s heart raced as she read the letter. Could this be the challenge she had been waiting for? She hurried off to tell Anna about it.
Chapter 5
Surely They’ll Send You
As the train chugged slowly southward, Lottie Moon and Anna Safford peered out the window of their carriage at the changing scenery. It was lush and green, as the South always was at this time of year. But the countryside was also dotted with the still visible signs of the ravages of the Civil War. Brick and stone chimneys, all that remained of once glorious plantation homes, stood as gaunt monuments to a southern way of life the war had destroyed. At the sight of such chimneys, Lottie often found her mind drifting back to Viewmont and the very different life she had once lived there.
Finally the train pulled into Cartersville, Georgia, and waiting at the station was Pleasant Moon. “Hello, ladies,” he bellowed as the train hissed to a halt.
Lottie leaned out the window and waved. “Pleasant, how pleasant to see you!” she teased, using the greeting she and her cousins had always used when they saw him.
Pleasant laughed. “You haven’t changed one bit for all your schooling, Lottie!” He took off his hat and bowed slightly. “Miss Safford, I presume?” he said.
Anna smiled. “Yes, indeed. It is good to meet you at last, Mr. Moon.”
Pleasant turned to the helper he had brought along with him. “You wait here while the ladies get off the train, and I’ll see to their luggage,” he said.
By the time Lottie and Anna had climbed down from the train, Pleasant had claimed their trunks. While his helper loaded the trunks onto the wagon, Pleasant helped the two women climb aboard and get seated on one of the wagon’s hard wooden seats.
“How are you, Lottie? You must be exhausted,” Pleasant inquired as he guided the wagon away from the station.
“Not nearly as tired as I would be if I had come by stagecoach. Trains are a much smoother and more comfortable way to travel,” she replied. “Anna and I have been waiting forever to hear about our new school. Tell us all about it.”
Pleasant cleared his throat and looked down. Lottie’s heart skipped a beat. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Well, not exactly,” replied her cousin. “We do have a schoolhouse, of sorts, and some students…” His voice trailed off.
“Then tell us about the schoolhouse,” Lottie said eagerly.
“Well, buildings are hard to come by, as I am sure you can appreciate. The Union army burned virtually every structure it could to the ground. However, we were able to find an old cannery. It has three rooms, one large and two smaller, and the canning stoves have been stripped out of the building.”
Pleasant looked up at Lottie apologetically. In an instant she knew why he was embarrassed. The last time the two had met, Lottie had been the pampered daughter of a very wealthy family, able to have the best of everything life could offer. And now, here was Lottie’s cousin offering her a low-paying job as a teacher in a school that would be run in an old cannery!
Lottie smiled bravely. “Time has certainly changed our circumstances, Pleasant,” she assured her cousin. “Anna and I will be happy to do whatever we can to teach the girls of Cartersville, in an old cannery or anywhere else.”
A look of relief crept across Pleasant’s face. Then, gingerly, Pleasant proceeded. “We’ve sent out flyers and talked to hundreds of people, but we have only seven girls enrolled so far.”
“That’s a start,” Lottie said, trying to sound a lot more hopeful than she felt.
Soon the wagon pulled up in front of Pleasant’s home, where the two women were to stay for as long as they wanted.
When Lottie finally got to see the cannery classroom, her heart sank. It had no equipment, not even a desk in the place, and weeds grew high around the edges of the building’s brick walls. A number of the windows were broken as well.
After a few moments, Lottie regained her composure and brightly announced to Anna, “Well, we had better get to work! The first thing we need to do is make a list of everything we need.”
Soon the two young women were hard at work transforming the old cannery into a school. Since no funds were available to purchase the supplies they needed, they spent their own money buying books and science equipment, along with a piano and an organ. After they had pulled the weeds from the overgrown shrubbery around the buildings, they planted trees and flowers in their place.
It took only a few days after the start of the school year for news to spread. By the end of the first week, enrollment was up to thirty, and within two months, one hundred girls were attending class. This kept the two teachers of the Cartersville School for Young Ladies busy, but not busy enough for Lottie. The more she had to do, the more energy she seemed to have. Once again, she volunteered to teach Sunday school. She also often accompanied the Reverend Headden, the local Baptist pastor, on his visits to some of the most desperate people in town.
The year passed quickly, and all of Cartersville seemed happy with the new school. Indeed, enrollment was even higher for the start of the second year, and Lottie and Anna looked forward to getting back to teaching classes again.
Something happened during that year that both shocked and unsettled Lottie. It had to do with the letter she received from her youngest sister, Edmonia. The letter was dated April 16, 1872, and Lottie had to read it three times before its full impact hit. Somehow Eddie had managed to get herself appointed as a single female missionary to China. What was more astonishing was that by the time Lottie received the letter, Edmonia was already well on her way there!
After getting over the initial shock of the letter, Lottie began to piece together the extraordinary events that led to her younger sister’s being sent as a single woman missionary to China. Eddie had been missionary secretary at the Richmond Female Institute, and one of her duties while in that position was to write to Tarleton and Martha Crawford, who had gone out as missionaries to China in 1851. Eddie and Lottie had often discussed what was happening in Tengchow, China, where the Crawfords now lived. In fact, the two sisters had committed to send forty-five dollars in gold to support the school Martha Crawford had opened there. (This had been a large sum of money for them to raise on their incomes.)
According to Edmonia’s letter, the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board had given permission for another single woman, Lula Whilden of South Carolina, to accompany her sister and brother-in-law to Canton, China, to help in missionary work among the women there. The board had approved this because Lula would not be working alone but would be living in the same house as her married sister. As a result, Eddie decided that since the Foreign Mission Board had allowed one single woman to go to China as a missionary, it should allow any single women who wanted to go there the same privilege. So she wrote to Martha Crawford and asked for a letter inviting her to work with them in Tengchow. Martha obligingly wrote the letter of invitation, and Eddie began assailing the Foreign Mission Board with requests to be allowed to go and help the Crawfords in China. Finally the board agreed and gave her permission to go, as long as she paid her own way there and supplied her own living expenses, at least until some better support arrangement could be worked out for her.
Twenty-one-year-old Edmonia had jumped at the chance, and as her letter calculated, by the time Lottie read it, she would already be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean en route to China.
Lottie read the letter to Anna Safford, who was as astonished by its contents as Lottie had been.
“It hardly seems possible!” exclaimed Anna. “The Baptists are sending out a twenty-one-year-old single woman. Why, Lottie, if they’ll send Edmonia, surely they’ll send you!”
Lottie was having the same thought. As the year progressed, she wrote to the Reverend Henry Tupper, the secretary of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and asked if it might be possible for her to join her younger sister in China as a missionary. She also wrote to Edmonia to find out whether there was enough work to keep them both busy. Eddie wrote right back telling Lottie that Tarleton Crawford thought she would be perfectly suited to help in the school. At the end of the letter she added, “I cannot convince myself that it is the will of God that you shall not come. True, you are doing a noble work at home, but are there not some who could fill your place? I don’t know of anyone who could fill the place offered you here. In the first place, it is not everyone who is willing to come to China. In the next place, their having the proper qualifications is doubtful.”
Around this time, the Reverend Headden attended a regional Baptist pastors meeting and returned to Cartersville fired up to recruit members of his congregation to go out as foreign missionaries. On his return, he preached a rousing sermon about the need for missionaries. When he was done, Lottie slipped out of her front-row pew and hurried home. She did not eat lunch or dinner that day and instead spent the time praying about her future. When she finally emerged from her room, she was sure of one thing: God had called her to be a missionary in China. She quickly found her friend Anna to tell her the news. Much to Lottie’s surprise, Anna herself had felt the same call. As a result, the Presbyterian church was preparing to send her out as a missionary to China.
June 2, 1873, was one of the most difficult days in Lottie’s life. It was the day she and Anna told the students at the Cartersville School for Young Ladies that they were resigning as teachers and going to China as missionaries. Many of the girls sobbed quietly after the announcement was made.
Some of the girls’ parents had a different reaction. They asked Pleasant Moon and the school’s board why two talented young women would want to waste themselves on the heathen in some far-off country. Didn’t they know there were good southern girls who needed an education?
Still, as time passed, people began to adjust to the fact that the two women would be leaving, and another teacher was hired to take their place. With the arrival of the new teacher, it was time for Lottie to concentrate on getting to China.
The women of the First Baptist Church in Cartersville were excited to think that someone they knew, a woman no less, was going to China as a missionary. It all sounded so adventurous and bold to them. They banded together and formed a women’s missionary society to help Lottie with money and moral support.
Lottie purchased a ticket to China aboard the Costa Rica, a three-masted square-rigged sailing ship. The vessel was due to sail from San Francisco on September 1, 1873. Lottie estimated it would take her two weeks to travel by train on the new transcontinental railway to get to San Francisco, leaving her a month to visit her sister Orie and her growing family.
Orie and her husband, John Andrews, lived in Lauderdale County, on the Alabama-Tennessee state line. By now Orie had given birth to six sons, though three of them already had died from childhood illnesses. The two sisters had a wonderful reunion, and Orie taught Lottie as much as she could about the effects of various medicines and how to care for the sick. In the evenings, Lottie wrote long letters to her many friends, explaining to them why she was going to China. She also wrote an open letter to Southern Baptist churches. It took her a long time to find the right words, but eventually she wrote and encouraged the young men of the church to take up their place in missions. At the end of the letter she added: “For women, too, foreign missions open a new and enlarged sphere of labor and furnish opportunities for good which angels might almost envy.… Could a Christian woman possibly desire higher honor than to be permitted to go from house to house and tell of a Savior to those who have never heard His name? We could not conceive a life which would more thoroughly satisfy the mind and heart of a true follower of the Lord Jesus.”
