Agnew, Eliza (1807-1883)
First unmarried American woman missionary to Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
Known in later life as the Mother of a Thousand Daughters, Agnew at age ten decided to become a missionary after hearing missionary-physician John Scudder speak. A Presbyterian, she sailed to Ceylon under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1839 and never returned to the United States. She went to Ceylon to relieve the overworked missionary wives by taking charge of the Uduvil Girls’ Boarding School, the oldest girls’ boarding school of the ABCFM. Under her principalship, over 600 of the 1,300 girls she educated became Christians. The Uduvil graduates returned to their villages as the wives of Christian men and as teachers. Uduvil converts provided the anchor for the small Christian community in an unresponsive mission field. During her vacations, Agnew itinerated among former students, giving advice and strengthening their Christian commitment. She also supervised forty Bible women.
In 1885 an ABCFM deputation led by Rufus Anderson reduced the size of Uduvil and eliminated English instruction in efforts to promote “three-self” principles. Agnew, however, outlived the reverses caused by the deputation. Upon her retirement from Uduvil in 1879, female education was more advanced in Ceylon than in other mission fields of the ABCFM. She died and was buried in Ceylon.
This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved. By Dana L. Robert.
Bibliography
Short treatments of Agnew’s life include the pamphlet “Eliza Agnew” by Ethel Hubbard (1917) and an entry in Annie Ryder Gracey, Eminent Missionary Women (1898). The Congregational journal Life and Light for Women contains articles by and on Agnew, including an obituary. Minnie Hastings Harrison’s history of Uduvil Seminary (182401924)) was printed in Ceylon in 1925. A file on Eliza Agnew is located in the ABCFM archives at Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MAss.