Everywhere at home, everywhere a stranger: the communities of the Moravian missionary Mary (Polly) Hartmann

Abstract

Women were an integral, yet often overlooked, aspect of Protestant mission work in the nineteenth century. Married female missionaries were seen as important workers especially as their common gender identification allowed them to more easily communicate with indigenous women than male missionaries were able to. However, the writings of female missionaries did not often reach the broader public as males were the primary official correspondents of missions. The diaries and letters of one female missionary, Mary (Polly) Hartmann (1838–1916), who worked on the Ebenezer mission station in Colonial Victoria from 1863 to 1875, provides an unusual insight into the daily life of a European woman on the Aboriginal mission in the nineteenth century. In this article, her understanding of her place is examined through three levels of community being: her missionary community, a colonial community and a transnational global community. The scales and spaces which held meaning for Polly provide an insight into the possible experiences of many other women of similar standing. Through examining these three separate, but interrelated, communities for different women, future comparisons may be made across time and space, providing a thicker web of experiences of female missionaries in the nineteenth century.