History of Shan Churches in Burma 1861-2001 - Khamkoo

Appendix 278
April 30th. The thoughtful kindness of this missionary in taking over from me the management of the
commissariat and camp arrangements during our journeys together with his skill in keeping the loads of
each elephant separate and having only such things unpacked as were immediately required enabled me
to start by daybreak every morning (except when we were delayed by the carelessness of the elephantdrivers,
who occasionally allowed their animals to stray) and I was thus able to make longer journeys
and do more work than I could otherwise have done. I trust that the knowledge he was able to collect of
the various dialects of the Shan language and the information he gained about the customs and habits of
the Ping Shan will be a full recompense to him for the constant and enthusiastic manner in which he
took up those matters. It is only by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the languages, habits, customs,
and superstitions of the people that missionaries can hope to influence and convert them. The noble
work that Cushing has done in translating the Bible into Shan will greatly aid his fellow-missionaries in
Christianizing and civilizing not only the Shan but also the neighboring tribes who understand their
language. The greatest field for missionaries in Indo-China lies, undoubtedly, among the non-Buddhist
hill-tribes where so much good work has already been done by the American Baptist, the American
Presbyterian and China Inland Missions.” 5
Ellen Winsor (Mrs. Cushing)
Ellen Winsor grew up in Boston and became a schoolteacher there. When she was 21, she went to
Beaufort, SC, to start a school for former slaves. In addition, she started an orphanage and
superintended Pope’s Plantation on St. Helena’s Island. She married one of the other volunteers, but
less than two years later, the ship on which he was returning to Beaufort from New York was wrecked
and he was lost.
Ellen went home to Boston and became the Director of The Home for Little Wanderers, an orphanage.
At nearby Newton Theological School was Josiah Nelson Cushing, actively seeking a wife in order to
qualify as a missionary to Burma under the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. He and Ellen
found each other and were married on her 26 th birthday. The Cushings went to Burma as missionaries to
the Shan, a displaced people. Josiah was a preacher, scholar, explorer, translator, and educator. While
her husband worked in one part of the country, Ellen often worked in another. Although Josiah was
recognized as the leading Shan language scholar in the world, one of the first pieces they published was
a tract, which Ellen translated into the Shan language. Today, there is a Cushing Hall named for them at
the headquarters of the Burma Baptist Convention in Rangoon.
When the Cushings’ son was ready to enter Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, Ellen Cushing left
Burma and became a field secretary of the Women’s Baptist Foreign Mission Society of Pennsylvania.
A project of the Society was to start a training school for women who felt called to enter church
vocations. For seven years, she stumped the state, trying to transform the dream into reality. In the
summer of 1892, she met three young women who said they wanted to attend such a school. She told
them to plan on coming, for there would be a school ready for them. Then she went back to the Society
and told them they would have to get a school ready, they did, and Ellen Cushing became its first
preceptress. 6
5 A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in Shan States by Holt Samuel Hallett, published by W. Blackwood and sons , 1890
p312
6 http://www.eastern.edu/centers/ccas/History.shtml Sept. 9, 2006