Francis R. Hanson (27 March 1807 – 21 October 1873) was appointed by The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America as one of the first two Episcopal Church

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

to travel to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

in 1835.

Early life

Hanson was born in Durham County,

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. He graduated from

Virginia Theological Seminary Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), formally called the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, located at 3737 Seminary Road in Alexandria, Virginia is the largest and second oldest accredited Episcopal seminary in the Unit ...

in 1833 and was ordained

deacon A deacon is a member of the diaconate, an office in Christian churches that is generally associated with service of some kind, but which varies among theological and denominational traditions. Major Christian churches, such as the Catholic Churc ...

on 19 May 1833 and priest on 30 May 1834.

Missionary work in China and Indonesia

Under the auspices of the

Protestant Episcopal Church Mission The Protestant Episcopal Church Mission (PECM, also known as the American Church Mission) was a Christian missionary initiative of the Episcopal Church that was involved in sending and providing financial support to lay and ordained mission workers ...

on 30 June 1834, Hanson and the Rev. Henry Lockwood set sail from New York to Canton, China, as the first missionaries of the Episcopal Church to serve in that country. Finding China too dangerous to set up a permanent mission outpost and even to learn the Chinese language, both missionaries relocated the same year first to Singapore and then to

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

(modern day Jakarta) to study the Chinese language and set up a mission school serving the local Chinese speaking community. Hanson and Lockwood's early work in studying the Chinese language and evangelizing to Chinese speakers in Batavia laid the groundwork for missionaries such as Rev. William Jones Boone, later consecrated as the first Bishop of Shanghai and Emma Jones, one of the first women Episcopal missionaries to serve in China. Due to ill health, Hanson repatriated to the United States in 1838, serving as rector of Trinity Church,

Demopolis, Alabama Demopolis is the largest city in Marengo County, in west-central Alabama. The population was 7,162 at the time of the 2020 United States census, down from 7,483 at the 2010 census. The city lies at the confluence of the Black Warrior River and T ...

from 1839 until 1851. From 1851 to 1863 he served as rector of St. Andrew's Church, Macon Station, Alabama.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanson, Francis 1807 births 1873 deaths Anglican missionaries in China Virginia Theological Seminary alumni American Anglican missionaries American expatriates in China