Descriptive Summary
Creator(s)
Biographical Note / Administrative History
B.M. and Dorothy Schlotter served as missionaries in the Belgian Congo from 1920 to 1928. B.M. Schlotter was born in 1889. He attended Presbyterian College of South Carolina in Clinton, graduating in 1910. In 1915, Schlotter was appointed to the Congo as a missionary for the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Dorothy Chambers Schlotter was the daughter of the Reverend Caleb Wallace Chambers and Emma Daniel Chambers who served as Presbyterian missionaries to the Alabama Coushatta Indians in Polk County, Texas. Dorothy Chambers attended Lexington College in Lexington, Missouri for two years, then transferred to Texas Presbyterian College but was called home after one term to care for her parents. In 1920, while B.M. Schlotter was on furlough in the United States, he and Dorothy Chambers married. After the wedding, the Schlotters sailed for the Congo, working there together at the mission station at Luebo in the Kasai district. In 1928, the couple retired from missionary work and returned to the United States.
Collection Overview
This collection consists of correspondence from B.M. and Dorothy Schlotter to Caleb W. and Emma Chambers, Dorothy Schlotter’s parents. The letters were written between 1920 and 1928, when the couple served as missionaries in the Congo. Most of the letters were sent from the mission station at Luebo. There are also letters sent during furloughs and in transit to and from the field. The letters describe domestic affairs, the work of the mission, visits from other missionaries, visits to other mission stations in the Congo, and the activities of the couple’s son Max. The collection includes typed transcriptions of the majority of the letters. The transcriptions were made by Max W. Schlotter in the mid-1990s.
Organization and Arrangement
Summary of Box Contents
Box 1: Correspondence, 1920-1922
Box 2: Correspondence, 1923-1928
Box 3: Transcriptions of correspondence, 1920-1928
Administrative Information
Received from Max W. Schlotter and James S. Evans II in 2001.
This collection is minimally processed: materials may not have been ordered beyond their original condition. Guide revised in 2009 by Jennifer Barr, Archives Intern.
Preferred Citation
B.M. Schlotter and Dorothy Schlotter Correspondence, RG 463, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.