Woman's Home Missionary Society
Denomination	Methodist Episcopal Church
Founded	1880
Founders	Elizabeth Rust   Jennie C. Hartzell
First Missionaries	Mrs. L. M. Dunton, Josephine Cowgill

The desperate living conditions of former slaves, especially the hardships faced by women and children, motivated the Methodist women of the North to organize. Mrs. Elizabeth Rust, the wife of the corresponding secretary for the Freedman's Aid Society, got involved in the effort to establish a national women's society for home missions in the Methodist Episcopal Church after meeting Mrs. Jennie Hartzell of New Orleans. Mrs. Hartzell was the wife of a Methodist Episcopal pastor and had taken it upon herself to reach out to the African-American women and children in the city. The scope of her work included home visitations, mothers' meetings, literature distribution, evangelism, and later the establishment of a mission school. After seeing firsthand the need for mission work in New Orleans, Mrs. Rust was motivated to write pieces for the church press that described the work, solicited donations for it, and called for the creation of a national organization in order to expand the work into other cities.

Rev. and Mrs. Hartzell traveled to the 1880 General Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio with the expectation that General Conference would approve the formation of a woman's home missionary society. They had the full support of the preachers of the Louisiana Conference, but when they got to General Conference they heard nothing but discouraging words. The matter never came up for a vote, and the Hartzell's feared the issue would have to wait another four years until the next General Conference. Immediately following General Conference, Dr. A. B. Leonard, the Presiding Elder of the Cincinnati District, called on the Hartzell and inquired after the progress of their effort to start a home mission organization. After hearing of their failure at General Conference Dr. Leonard offered to schedule a meeting with the women of his district because he suspected there was a great deal of interest among the women of Cincinnati.

The meeting was held on Tuesday, June 8th. Elizabeth Rust presided and Jennie Hartzell spoke of her mission work. Those in attendance dedicated themselves to the creation of a home mission society for Methodist women and selected the work begun in New Orleans by Mrs. Hartzell as their first project. -Laura Bartels Felleman

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