"Maria-Fearing" (1838-May 23,1937)

A noted Presbyterian Missionary,who was born into slavery in

Alabama.She financed her own education at Talladega College and worked as a domestic servant and educator for many years after Emancipation.At the age of 56,she became a missionary in the Belgian Congo(now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) at a time when that country was under the brutal control of Belgium's King Leopold II.Maria spent more than 20 years in Africa,finally retiring at age 78.While in the Congo,she rescued and ran a home for girls and young women who had been kipnapped or sold into slavery,often bartering goods for their freedom.


She was born to Jesse & Mary fearing,both slaves on a plantation owned by Overton Winston in Gainesville,Sumter County.When she reached young adulthood,Maria was chosen to be a house-servant by the plantation owner's wife,Amanda Winston.Amanda was a Presbyterian and taught Maria to read the bible and told her tales of missionaries in Africa;she encouraged Maria to join the Presbyterian Church soon did.Freed at the age of 27 at the end of the Civil War,Maria found employment in the area as a domestic;six years later,after hearing a visting preacher speak of Talladega College,in Talladega County,she left her position to seek an education there.Although called a college,the school also included and elementary and secondary school,and Maria began her classes at age 33 with the youngest children at the school.


Maria completed the ninth grade and then taught in a rural school and then taught and then taught in a rural school near Anniston,Calhoun County,eventually buying her own home in Anniston.She returned to Talladega College to serve as assistant matron of the boarding department.In response to a talk by a Presbyterian missionary to Africa,W.H.Sheppard,and remembering the tales of missionaries told to her by Amanda Winston,Maria volunteered at age 56 to become a missionary in the Congo in Central Africa she sold her home,and with an additional $100 raised by the Congregational Church in Talladega,set sail to England on May 26,1894.After arriving in Africa,she undertook the two-month trip to her posting,part of it by litter and part by riverboat up the Congo,Kasai,and Lulua rivers to the station in Luedo.Maria entered a country that had just endured a bloody war in 1892-1893 between forces controlled by Leopold II and by Arab forces out of Zanzibar.


Leopold had been awarded the Congo during the European partition of Africa in 1885,and his eventually victory over Arab forces left him in total control of what was called the Congo Free State.His troops,led by the Force Publique,brutalized the populace to extract quotas in the rubber and ivory trade,killing thousands and cutting off their hands as proof of the kills.The slave trade also was still rampant.Luebo,in the western part of the nation where Maria was stationed,was somewhat insulated from from the conflicts.One at least two occasions,the station was threatened,and Maria had to prepare for evacuation or invasion W.H. Sheppard,who had inspired Maria to go to the Congo,was one of several Presbyterian missionaries who spoke out publicly about Leopold's brutality and eventually helped to bring his control of the region to an end in 1908.Nevertheless,the estimates of the number of people slaughtered during this period run as high as 10 million.After her arrival Maria immediately undertook to help the husband and wife who were running the mission there and began learning the local language;as she progressed in her mastery,she teaching a Sunday school class.After a year there,she was given an official postion and a salary by the Presbyterian Church.She began ransoming children from the slave trade,from groups that had kidnapped them or to whom they been sold,with goods such as scissors,cloth, and other items,and soon housed 40-50 young women.


Using her own salary and donations from home,Maria oversaw the construction of a multi-room house,with six-eight girls per room,each monitored by an older girl.The girls took part in keeping the facility clean and learned basic sanitation,cooking,sewing,and ironing from Maria.She also held a church service every day after breakfast.The girls attended the missionary day school to learn to read and write.The home eventually became known as Pantops,after Presbyterian school in Virginia.


In 1906,after 12 years in the Congo,Maria returned to the United States.After a year at home,she went back to Africa to serve another eight years at the group home,she had built.Maria returned again to the United States in 1915 with with her recently married long-time housemate in Africa,Lillian Thomas DeYamperts,and Lillian husband;she fully intended to go back to Africa,she was urged to retire by church officials.


Maria lived with the DeYamperts for nearly 10 years and attended a Presbyterian Church in Selma,Dallas County,teaching a Sunday school class there.She fell and broke her hip at age 90 but recovered and continue teaching Sunday school.After Lillian died and Lillian's husband remarried,Maria returned to Sumter County in 1931 to be cared for by a nephew.