South Africa General Mission

Abbey Park Ferguson was born on 4^th April 1837 in Whately, Massachusetts. She Graduated from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in the 1850s. Teaching at a public school in Michigan, before moving to Paris where she found difficulties, because of the Franco-Prussian War. Later in 1871 she was in Connecticut working at the city mission until 1873. Along with a Miss Ann Bliss, she moved to Cape Town and founded the first Huguenot Collage at Wellington in the Cape of Good Hope, which they modelled on the Holyoke Female Seminary.

Mrs. Caroline Head had met Miss. Abbie Park Ferguson at Wellington, Cape of Good Hope on Saturday and Sunday, 28^th and 29^th October 1893, at the Seminary, where circa 120 girls were under her tutelage. Several of these girls were later sent out as mission workers. Later Abbie Park Ferguson was in England and stayed with Mr and Mrs. Head at Wimbledon at the time of the 1901 ‘Census Returns for England and Wales’.

Ferguson travelled much in the United States, Africa and Europe during her working life. She received an honorary M.A. and Litt. D. from the Mount Holyoke Collage. Retiring in 1910, she helped to form a Women’s Interdenominational Missionary Committee for the churches in South Africa. She died in 1919 at Heguenot.

References
Ferguson Papers, 1861-1919. http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/mountholyoke/mshm107.html

Also see on this website South Africa General Mission, 'The "Mrs. Head" correspondence'.