Mary Ann Aldersey

Mary Ann Aldersey 艾迪綏 (June 24, 1797 – 1868), the first Christian missionary woman (married or single) to serve in China. She founded a school for girls in Ningbo, Zhejiang. Her pioneering the field of mission work for single women in China was the most remarkable outcome of her life.

Aldersey was a native of London from a wealthy nonconformist family. She studied Chinese under Robert Morrison in London when he was on home leave from 1824 to 1826. Also in attendance were Samuel Dyer and his wife Maria Tarn. The friendship that she forged with Maria eventually led to her caring for their orphaned daughters later in China. In London, Aldersey was still attached to family ties, but she made gifts to the London Missionary Society that enabled Maria Newell to go to Malacca (1827) where Newell met and married pioneer missionary Karl Gützlaff.

In 1837 she herself was able to go to Batavia (present-day Jakarta), where she started a school for Chinese girls. When the treaty ports in China were opened (1843) she moved the school to Ningbo, where she continued to work until 1861. Never an agent of any missionary society, she did maintain close links with the London Missionary Society. Several of her teaching staff were Chinese-speaking daughters of missionaries; at least four became missionary wives, including Burella Hunter Dyer who married John Shaw Burdon, Maria Jane Dyer, who married James Hudson Taylor in 1857 (against Aldersey's wishes). Another protegee, Mary Ann Leisk, became the wife of William Armstrong Russell, later bishop in north China.

In 1861 Aldersey handed her school over to the Church Missionary Society and retired to Australia, where she lived until her death. She retired to Mclaren Vale, South Australia in 1861 and built a house (Tsong Gyiaou) named after a former preaching station. The name is an anglicised form of 'San Ch'iao' (pronounced 'Song Jow'). It is now part of the Southern Districts War Memorial Hospital.