 |
| Bust of Elizabeth Garland Hall before the Home built in her Honour |
In her book, Strange Victory: The
Life and Work of Elizabeth Garland Hall (Mama Hall), 1997. Mrs. Beryl
Russell has told the story of Elizabeth Garland Hall, whose work among children
and women in Jamaica is popularly known especially among Jamaica Baptist women.
Elizabeth Garland was a gifted woman from a country near the Black Sea in Eastern Europe – perhaps Romania.[i] She was taken to America as an orphan and grew up in the Boston area. She grew up among Christians in a mission-oriented Baptist Church. Mrs. Hall related the story of an unnamed Jamaican who went to serve in the Congo – to Boma, Banana, Mukamvika, and other places, visited Boston to share the story of her experience as a Jamaican missionary to Congo.[ii] This influenced Elizabeth to answer the call to go on overseas mission for Christ.
For this purpose, Elizabeth Garland received training at the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago, Illinois.[iii] It was after she was entered in the School’s registry as a Black student that Garland realized she was not regarded as a white person, which is what she had always thought she was. It took her some time to adjust to people’s perception of her as a black person.
 |
| E. Garland Hall |
William Hall had trained for the ministry at Calabar Theological College and after graduation, had served at Fernando Po, [now, Bioko in Equatorial Guinea], Africa, under the aegis of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). When BMS evacuated the island, Hall went to USA where he received further training in the Richmond Theological College in the state of Virginia.
While a student in Richmond, William Hall was interviewed by H. Gratton Guinness, whose British organization, the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, had commenced work in the Belgian Congo in 1888, under the name of the Congo Balolo Mission. Guinness turned over the work to the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) and, in that same year – 1888 – after Hall’s ordination in West Virginia on September 14, 1888, ABMU commissioned him as missionary to the Belgian Congo.[iv] He is perhaps the first Black man to be sent on mission by ABMU, who did not sponsor another Black man as a foreign missionary until the 1980s.[v]
After serving for four years in the Congo, Hall went on furlough to the USA, when he met and married Elizabeth Garland. The couple were married in Richmond, Virginia, in November 1893. Soon after this, ABMU commissioned William and Elizabeth Hall, as a missionary couple, to serve in Congo. Garland Hall’s most significant contribution was her ministry among women and children.
In April 1918, eight months
before the dreaded pandemic named “Spanish influenza” “spread like August grass
fires” over the Congo,[vi]
the Halls completed their service in the Congo, and went to reside in William
Hall’s homeland, Jamaica. They lived on the edge of Sturge Town, the community
of Hall’s birth.[vii]
Renewing her interest in ministry to women and children, Mama Hall established and operated, in her family home, an orphanage she named the Pansy Garden Home for Children. Mama Hall used the platforms made available to her to share her testimony, to offer reflections on her experience in Congo, and to raise funds for her Pansy Garden Home.
Mama Hall was chosen as Organizing Secretary for the JBWF and she used the many speaking opportunities she had in Jamaica to promote the Women’s Federation. She was one of the speakers at the Young People’s Service at the 1919 JBU Assembly held in Falmouth.[viii] She spoke often at Calabar High School and in many other venues across Jamaica. From the inception of the Federation, she became a catalyst for the formation of Federation branches in many JBU-related churches.
In 1931, when Mama Hall faced a life-threatening illness, she was admitted to the hospital named in honour of distinguished Anglican bishop and statesman, Enos Nuttall. While there, she pined for the country where she grew up and asked to be taken to America. In 1932, she departed Jamaica, leaving her husband behind. After sixteen months in Graduate Hospital, New York City, she died. She was buried in the Kemisco Cemetery in Mt. Pleasant, Westchester County, New York.[ix] Well did Calabar Principal, Ernest Price, speak of Elizabeth Garland Hall when he described her as:
one who unites in herself the courage of
a soldier; the tenderness of a mother; the sympathy of a pastor; the force of a
hurricane; the softness of a zephyr; the firmness of a rock; and the gentleness
of a dove.[x]
 |
| Mama Hall |
Mama Hall made her exit from Jamaica, but she left behind what would become a vibrant movement of Baptist women who have proudly carried the banner of the JBWF that has offered more than one hundred years of ministry. Today, hardly will any knowledgeable person question the justification for celebrating what God has accomplished in and through the JBWF, whose establishment of the Garland Hall Memorial Home represents their continuing identification with Garland Hall’s signature contribution in Jamaica. Not surprisingly, a bust of Mrs. Garland Hall greets persons visiting the facility today.
[i] Given her confusion over her
ethnicity, she may have been a member of the Romani people (gypsies) in Romania
– of mixed Asian and European descent. On the basis of the one drop rule in
USA, she would not be deemed white.
[ii] See
the report on the address she delivered at the 1920 JBU Assembly. Gleaner,
February 12,1920.
[iii] That School was, in 1962, absorbed into
Colgate Rochester Divinity School.
[iv] Baptists in America
established the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist denomination in
the US for Foreign Missions which, by 1814, was referred to as the Triennial
Convention. This Convention initiated “the Baptists’ first unified national missionary-sending
effort formed in the U.S.” The Convention set up a committee called the Baptist
Board for Foreign Missions to manage its work. In 1910, this body became the American
Baptist Missionary Union. In 1910, it was given the new name American Baptist
Foreign Mission Society and in 1973, its name was again changed to American
Baptist International Ministries.
[v] Beryl J. Russell, Strange
Victory, 33.
[vi]
American Baptist Missionary Union, One Hundred and Fifth Annual Report of
the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (Boston, MA: American Baptist
Missionary Union, 1919), 118.
[vii]
Also called Birmingham, Sturge Town
was the first “Free Village” Rev John Clark of Brown’s Town Baptist Church
established in St Ann. According to Clark, when it was completed, the Sturge
Town settlement comprised “nearly 100 building lots and an equal
number of acres for provision ground.” See Hugh Paget, “The Free Village System in Jamaica”, Caribbean
Quarterly 1:4 (n.d.), 7-19.
[viii] The other speakers were Rev A G Kirkham of Savanna-la-Mar and Mr. K N
Phillips of Kingston. See The Gleaner, February 19, 1919, p. 10. In July
1927, she addressed a concert at the Brown’s Town Court House describing her
experience in Africa and displaying and exhibits from the continent and raised
funds for a Hospital
Fund and her Pansy Home. (The Gleaner July 8, 1927, p. 13).
She addressed the evening service on their Annual Missionary Day at Hanover
Street Baptist Church in March 1919. (The Gleaner, March 8, 1919, p. 19).
[ix] Beryl J. Russell, Strange
Victory, 80.
[x] Cited in Beryl J. Russell, Strange
Victory, 75-76 from the Jamaica
Baptist Reporter, January 1932.
Comments
Post a Comment