Christian History Home > Issue 66 > Out Yonder, on the Edge of Things
Out Yonder, on the Edge of Things
The most controversial, and most effective, missionary to the West and Alaska, Sheldon Jackson was always pushing the boundaries.
Randy Bishop | posted 4/01/2000 12:00AM
Before the automobile or airplane, Sheldon Jackson managed to log nearly one million miles from 1858 to 1908, primarily west of the Mississippi, as he served his Presbyterian denomination and the United States. Along the way, the five-foot, four-inch missionary managed to get a few things done:
He organized the first Presbyterian churches in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Arizona, and Alaska (leaving 77,105 new communicants in his wake), and he started 53 schools in Alaska. He founded Westminster College in Salt Lake City in 1895, started two newspapers (the Rocky Mountain Presbyterian and Sitka's North Star), and organized an Alaska Society of Natural History and Ethnology in Sitka. Sheldon Jackson College (Presbyterian), also in Sitka, bears his name.
"I have never seen him idle for a moment," wrote fellow traveler Alice Palmer Henderson. "He never hurries but just persists." Even through setbacks—poor health, one arrest and two legal trials—he persisted. Sheldon Jackson ranks as perhaps the ...
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