Betsey Stockton, Part 1

Betsey was born into slavery around fifteen years after the Revolutionary War ended. It’s believed that her father was a slave owner. She was given to a couple who settled in Princeton, New Jersey. Undaunted by her circumstances, Betsey taught herself to read and, as a teenager, made a lasting commitment to Christ and was baptized. In her early twenties, she became the first single woman to be sent as a missionary to the Hawaiian Islands. She was also the first former slave of mixed blood to start a school. She is credited for the education of 8,000 Hawaiian commoners during her few years on Maui. When she returned to the U.S. via London, she became the most globally traveled black woman at that time. During the remainder of her life, she had a profound impact in furthering the education and spiritual condition of the black community in Princeton, New Jersey.

• The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, Gregory Nobles
• She Calls Herself Betsey Stockton: The Illustrated Odyssey of a Princeton Slave by Constance K. Escher
• The Honolulu Star Advertiser Hawai’i Once Had a Negro Missionary
• Profiles of African-American Missionaries By Robert J. Stevens and Brian Johnson
• Missionaries You Should Know, Leslie Hildreth
• African-American Religion, A Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, Betsey Stockton’s Journal