The first American Presbyterian missionaries were sent out by the United Foreign Missionary Society and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. During the late 1830s, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Old School) Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions began new missions of its own. The Board organized missions in several countries, including Liberia (1833), India (1836), China (1838), Thailand (1840), Colombia (1856), and Japan and Brazil (1859). Because the PCUSA/PCUS division had not yet occurred, these early missions were established on behalf of Presbyterians in both the North and South.

During the Civil War years, the newly formed Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America had difficulty carrying out its program of foreign missions, and the blockade of southern ports effectively cut overseas communication, travel, and supplies. Following the war, the South was in economic ruin and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), like other southern denominations, had to repair war-damaged church buildings, recover confiscated church property, and restore its financial base. As a result of its postwar condition, the PCUS’s program of foreign missions was again delayed. Only gradually did the church develop work in several countries, including China (1867, where by 1926 it had built a large force of 209 missionaries), Brazil (1869), Mexico (1874), Japan (1885), the Congo (1890), Korea (1892), and Cuba (1899). Less permanent work was conducted in Italy (1867-1878), and Greece (1873-1892).

The church’s large mission program was carried out by its Executive Committee of Foreign Missions (ECFM), reorganized and renamed the Board of World Missions (BWM) in 1949, and the Division of International Mission (DIM) in 1973. The ECFM was located in Columbia, South Carolina until 1875 when it moved to Baltimore, Maryland. In 1889, the Committee moved to Nashville, Tennessee where it remained until the PCUS was restructured in 1972 and the BWM was centralized, along with other offices, in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Committee’s first executive secretary was J. Leighton Wilson who served until 1885. A former PCUSA missionary in West Africa, Wilson was the main driving force behind the denomination’s early foreign mission work. Richard McIlwaine (1834-1913) served as coordinate secretary from 1872 to 1882 when the work of the Executive Committee included both domestic and foreign missions. Another former missionary, Matthew Hale Houston (1841-1905), succeeded Wilson in 1885 and served until his return to China in 1893. Samuel Hall Chester (1851-1940) followed Houston, serving until 1912. The work of the Committee was reorganized by Egbert Watson Smith (1862-1944) during his tenure from 1912 to 1932. Smith was succeeded by a former missionary to Japan, Charles Darby Fulton (1892-1977), who served from 1932 to 1960. T. Watson Street, a professor of church history and missions at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, served from 1961 to 1973, and G. Thompson Brown, a former missionary in Korea, from 1973 to 1981.

Although the church’s missionary platform of 1907, calling for the commissioning of 800 missionaries and the training of 5,000 native workers, proved to be too ambitious, international mission work continued to expand during the first quarter of the twentieth century. By 1924, the church maintained 517 overseas missionaries in a large program which was exceeded by only a few other American denominations. However, the effects of the Depression and World War II seriously eroded the church’s missionary force, and not until 1957 was the church able to rebuild its contingent to pre-war levels from a 1944 low of 328 missionaries.

Important institutions founded by PCUS missionaries include Good Shepherd Hospital in Kananga, Democratic Republic of the Congo; Kinjo Gakuin University and Shikoku Christian College in Japan; Wilson Leprosy Center in Pusan and the Presbyterian Medical Center in Chonju, Korea; Gammon Institute in Lavras, and the Edward Lane Bible Institute in Patrocinio, Brazil.

Source: Guide to the manuscript collections of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. Robert Benedetto ; assisted by Betty K. Walker.
New York : Greenwood Press, 1990 (Call number: Z 6611 .P74 B46 1990)