Francis Hanson

Francis Hanson
The Revd.
Church	Episcopal Church
Orders
Ordination	30 May 1834
Personal details
Born	27 March 1807 Durham County, Maryland
Died	21 October 1873 Baltimore, Maryland

Francis R. Hanson (27 March 1807 – 21 October 1873) one of the first two Episcopal Church missionaries to travel to China.

Early life and call to ordination

Hanson was born in Durham County, Maryland. He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1833 and was ordained deacon on 19 May 1833 and priest on 30 May 1834.^[1]

Missionary work in China and Indonesia

Under the auspices of the Protestant Episcopal Church Mission on 30 June 1834, Hanson and the Revd. Henry Lockwood set sail from New York to Canton, China, as the first missionaries of the Episcopal Church to serve in that country. Finding China too dangerous to set up a permanent mission outpost, both missionaries relocated the same year first to Singapore and then to Batavia (modern day Jakarta) to study the Chinese language and set up a mission school serving the local Chinese speaking community.

Hanson and Lockwood's early work in studying the Chinese language and evangelizing to Chinese speakers in Batavia laid the groundwork for missionaries such as the Revd. William Jones Boone, later consecrated as the first Bishop of Shanghai and Emma Jones, one of the first women Episcopal missionaries to serve in China.^[2]

Due to ill health, Hanson repatirated to the United States in 1838, serving as rector of Trinity Church, Demopolis, Alabama from 1839 until 1851. From 1851 to 1863 he served as rector of St. Andrew's Church, Macon Station, Alabama.

References

1. Armentrout, Donald (2000). An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. New York: Church Publishing. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-89869-211-2.
2. Vaughn, J. Barry (2013). Bishops, Bourbons and Big Mules. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-8173-1811-6.