The "The Lost Grave Of Charlotte "Susanna" Hazen Rowe" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Beautiful day in the neighborhood so I parked the car along Orange Street and walked the half block to the St. James Episcopal Church Cemetery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I have written quite often about St. James and it's historical cemetery in the past and I recently read of one more grave site that is supposed to be there, but seems to somehow have been lost.  The grave is supposed to be the final resting place for Charlotte "Susanna" Hazen Rowe, the first female missionary of the 1815 founded Baptist Board of Foreign Missions.  So, what has happened to it?  

I entered through this gate and turned to my right to find
the tombstone of Charlotte's twin daughters. Click to enlarge.

As I entered the cemetery from the Orange Street entrance, I immedia- tely saw the bright white tombstone of Charlotte's twin daughters who are also buried at St. James as well as the monuments of Charlotte' mother and father, Ester Bowes Sayre and Judge William Augustus Atlee, but was not able to find the exact spot where Charlotte was buried.  Her story is extremely interesting and was recently published in the Lancaster Newspaper as told by the Reverend Reid Trulson.  Charlotte was born in Lancaster in 1782 and baptized at St. James Episcopal.  She lived her childhood in the family home on North Duke Street and was orphaned at the age of 11.  She went to Massachusetts to live with her sister Elizabeth.  She married Nathaniel Hazen White in 1803.  Three years later, after the death of her husband and baby, she joined the Baptist Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  In 1815 Charlotte applied to the American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions to service as a missionary.  The year before, the church had appointed their first Missionaries, Adoniram and Ann Judson.  But, it was found that a women could not legally be recognized as a missionary by any religious body, so Ann was no longer deemed a missionary.  Charlotte had wanted to serve alongside the Judson's in Burma. What could she do?  She petitioned the board of the Baptist Church to become a missionary.  After a vote, the majority agreed that the church bylaws did not specify that a missionary had to be a male, so they appointed her to be the first female missionary in history.  But, after a subsequent attempt to nullify her appointment, the board declared it has no money to send her to Burma to be with the Judsons.  At the time she had a modest estate left to her by her recently deceased husband so she self-funded her missionary trip.  She instead sailed to Kolkata, India in 1815 with the Rev. George Henry Hough and his wife on a restricted appointment.  They had plans to buy a printing press in India and present it to the Judsons.  

An old photograph of St. James Episcopal's Churchyard.
The tombstone of Charlotte's daughters would be to the left.

A few months later though she met British Baptist missionary Joshua Rowe, a widower with three sons, and married him.  She ended up going with him to Digah, India.  She and her new husband had three children of their own, twin daughters Charlotte Elizabeth and Ester Anna as well as a son Judson Ward Rowe.   But, because she had married a British Baptist Missionary, the American Board said she was no longer a missionary and removed her name from their rolls.  But, Rev. Reid Trulson, whom I mentioned talked with the Lancaster Newspaper, found that was not the case.  As he was looking through archives at Regents College at Oxford University, he found she had written to the British Baptist Missionary Society stating her desire to be once again recognized as a missionary by both the American and British groups.  Her request was denied.  So, she worked side by side with her husband until he died in 1823.  Even though she wasn't a recognized missionary, she continued her duties as if she was.  Three years later she and just her birth son and twin daughters moved to London where she asked the British Baptist Missionary Society to once appoint her a missionary so she could return to India.  They refused, so she and her family moved to Philadelphia where she started a school for girls in Philadelphia.  The following year she moved to Lowndesboro, Alabama where she taught English and drawing at a girls academy.  By 1850 she had moved back to Lancaster County where she served as the Principal of Strasburg Female Seminary.  Her two daughters died within 18 months of each other in 1851-1852.  She had them buried at St. James Episcopal in downtown Lancaster.  She then moved to Philadelphia where she lived until her death on Christmas Day, 1863 as reported in the Lancaster Newspaper.  Now is when the cloak of mystery begins.  

My photo of the tombstone of Charlotte's twin daughters.

Church leaders knew of her daughter's deaths and burial in the churchyard, but no one knew she had been buried there. But, a card file kept by the church was found and it indicated she had been buried in the cemetery.  A current member at our church, Ann Atlee Webber, who is a direct descendent of Charlotte Rowe didn't even know she was buried there.   Rev. Trulson came upon a short death notice in the Lancaster Examiner and Herald newspaper and called St. James to inquire about her burial.  According to the death posting in the newspaper, it is assumed she is truly buried in the St. James Cemetery.  So, St. James now awaits a marker that will be placed near her daughter's tombstone and we will be able to lay claim to having the first female missionary in the world buried in our cemetery.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.