Sarah E. Gorham

African Methodist Episcopal Church missionary in Africa

Sarah E. Gorham (1832–1894) was the first woman to be sent out as a missionary from the African Methodist Episcopal Church.^[1] She has been described as a "missionary, church leaders, social worker".

Gorham was born in either Maryland or Virginia,^[2] but her life is not documented until 1880, when she visited family members who had moved to Liberia, presumably via the American Colonization Society. While there, she became interested in the people of the area and the programs of the missionaries. After this visit, she returned to the United States and was involved at the Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1888, at the age of 56, she joined AME missionary John Frederick in Sierra Leone,^[3] travelling to the Magbelle mission in Sierra Leone (about 75 miles from Freetown), as the AME's first woman foreign missionary. At Magbele she established the Sarah Gorham Mission School, which gave both religious and industrial training.^[4]

In July 1894 she was bedridden with malaria and died the next month. She was buried in the Kissy Road Cemetery in Freetown, Sierra Leone.^[1]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Lindley, Susan Hill, Eleanor J. Stebner, eds. The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History, p. 91.
^ Dictionary of African Christian Biography website, Gorham, Sarah E.
^ Church Plant website, African Americans in Missions: Setting the Historical Record Straight, by Ken L. Davis (2002)
^ Ecumenical Life website, Twenty-Eight Saints: February 11 and 12

External links

Documenting the American South website A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: Being a Volume Supplemental to A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, by Daniel Alexander Payne, D.D., LL.D., Late One of Its Bishops: Chronicling the Principal Events in the Advance of the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1856 to 1922, by Smith, C. S. (Charles Spencer)

U.S. Black church denominations and leaders

General themes

Religion in Black America
Historically African-American Christian denominations
Clergy

Methodist

African Methodist Episcopal Church	John Adams Sr. Richard Allen Sarah Allen Benjamin W. Arnett George Lincoln Blackwell Morris Brown Jamal Harrison Bryant John Richard Bryant Richard H. Cain Archibald Carey Jr. Daniel Coker James H. Cone James Levert Davis Jordan Winston Early Orishatukeh Faduma Floyd Flake Carolyn Tyler Guidry Sarah E. Gorham William H. Heard Reginald Jackson Henrietta Phelps Jeffries Absalom Jones Ben Kinchlow Vashti Murphy McKenzie Biddy Mason Lena Doolin Mason Robert Meacham Lyman S. Parks Daniel Payne Charles H. Pearce Clementa C. Pinckney William Paul Quinn Reverdy Cassius Ransom Richard Henry Singleton Charles Spencer Smith Theophilus Gould Steward Henry McNeal Turner William Tecumseh Vernon D. Ormonde Walker Lewis Woodson
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church	William H. Day Julia A. J. Foote James Walker Hood Thomas James Singleton T. Jones John Kinard Jermain Wesley Loguen John E. Price William Henry Singleton John Bryan Small Mary J. Small Jeffery Tribble James Varick Alexander Walters
A.U.M.P. Church	Peter Spencer
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church	William Yancy Bell William H. Miles

Baptist

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church	Vernon Johns Martin Luther King Jr.
First African Baptist Church (Richmond, Virginia)	Lucy Goode Brooks
First African Baptist Church (Savannah, Georgia)	David George
Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship	Paul S. Morton
Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention	Clinton Caldwell Boone Lott Cary
National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.	Stewart Cleveland Cureton Joseph H. Jackson T. J. Jemison Willie James Jennings Henry Lyons Benjamin Mays W. J. Simmons
National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.	R. H. Boyd
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America	S. M. Lockridge
Progressive National Baptist Convention	Ralph Abernathy William Augustus Jones Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Gardner C. Taylor
United American Free Will Baptist Church	Benjamin Randall