Page 297 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

283.

of China and the Chinese, Abeel and Bridgman arrived at Canton

filled with Christian zeal for converting the heathen multi­

tudes.

Although the two men traveled to China together, Abeel

and Bridgman represented different mission organizations in the

United States. David Abeel, sponsored by the American Seamen's

Friends Society, ventured to China as chaplain to American
j
seamen at Whampoa. His traveling companion Eli ah Bridgman

was a member of the American Board of Com.�issioners for Foreign

Missions, the most important missionary society in the United

States. Bridgman's mission represented the American Board's

entrance into missionary work in East Asia. Spawned by the

revival of evangelism during the Great Awakening, the American

Board of Commis3ioners, formed at Salem in 1810 to direct the

efforts of ministers and seminarians who felt inspired to

preach Christianity to the heathen. In February 1812 the Board

sent its first group of missionaries abroad--to India and

Ceylon. During the following fifteen years the Board expanded

its membership and patronage throughout New England. In the

United States the organization sponsored missions among the

Indians, chiefly the Choctaws and Cherokees of the South and

Old Southwest. Abroad, besides India and Ceylon, American

missionaries affiliated with the Board concentrated their work
2
in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Turkey, and the Levant.

2
For a history of the American Board of Commissioners for
Foreign Missions and .its mission work abroad, see William E.
Strong, The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First
Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
(
)
Missions Boston, 1910 , Chaps. I-V.