Woman's Home and Foreign Mission Society
funded in 1879
The earliest national American Lutheran
women’s organization was the General Synod’s Woman’s Home and Foreign
Missionary Society, founded in 1879. Agitation for such an organization
had begun in 1875 by persons who saw the results of work by women of
other denominations who organized such organizations. The event that
finally “brought matters to a crisis,” was the denial of the Board of
Foreign Missions, due to lack of funds to support their work, of two
young women who had offered their services as missionaries. At least one
of these women, Mrs. Kate Boggs Shaffer, served as first missionary to
Zenana, India, from 1881-1883, and later played a leading role in the
missionary society, serving as first editor of Lutheran Women’s Work.
This is the earliest (1883) extant
photograph of this missionary society.
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