Bird, Mary Rebecca Stewart (1859-1914)
Missionary in Persia (Iran)
Bird was born at Castle Eden, County Durham, England, the daughter of the town’s Anglican minister. Educated at home, she was inspired at age five by stories of Africa told by a missionary friend of her father. Thoroughly committed to her call to the mission field, she refused an offer of marriage in preference to working in a foreign land. In 1891 she was accepted by the Church Missionary Society to go to Persia as a pioneer of women’s work. She prepared by attending The Willows, a training college for women workers in Stoke Newington, England, for a few months.
Bird lived and worked in Julfa and Isfahan from 1891 to 1897. Because she had some medical training, she opened a small dispensary at Isfahan. On furlough in 1897 and 1898, she spoke of her work to various groups in England and Canada and inspired many. Returning to Persia in 1899, she spent five years in Yezd and Kirman. Her younger sister’s marriage necessitated her return to England in 1904 to care for their mother. During the next eight years, in Liverpool, she was an effective advocate of missions. After her mother’s death in 1911, she returned to Persia, where she continued her work until her death from typhoid fever.
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 Joan R. Duffy.
Bibliography
Mary Bird, Persian Women and Their Creed (1899).
Clara C. Rice, Mary Bird in Persia (1916).