Annie Armstrong was a lay Southern Baptist

Southern Baptist Convention

The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...

 denominational leader instrumental in the founding of the Woman's Missionary Union.

Early life

Annie Walker Armstrong was born in Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

, Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

 to tobacconist

Tobacconist

A tobacconist is an expert dealer in tobacco in various forms and the related accoutrements .Such accoutrements include pipes, lighters, matches, pipe cleaners, pipe tampers, ashtrays, humidification devices, hygrometers, humidors, cigar cutters, and more. Books and magazines, especially ones...

 John Dunn Armstrong and his wife Mary Elizabeth Armstrong. She also had a brother named James. . She came from a long line of prominent Baptists including her great-great-grandfather Henry Satre who help establish the first Baptist church in Maryland.
At the age of 20, she had a "born again" experience and joined Seventh Street Baptist Church in Maryland. Soon afterward, she was among 100 former Seventh Street Baptist Church members who established Eutaw Place Church (now Woodbrook Baptist Church). The church was pastored by Richard Fuller

Richard Fuller (minister)

Richard Fuller was one of the founders of the Southern Baptist movement.Born to a respected family in Beaufort, South Carolina, he receive his early instruction from Dr. William T. Brautly. At the age of seventeen, Fuller entered Harvard University in Massachusetts...

, the third president of the Southern Baptist Convention, who was heavily involved in missionary activities.

It was at this church where Armstrong first became interested in missions, and she worked with various Baltimore missionary organizations ministering to African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

s, Native Americans

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

, Chinese American

Chinese American

Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...

s immigrants

Immigration

Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...

, and indigent

Poverty

Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

 women.

Woman's Missionary Union

In 1888, Armstrong led the creation of the Woman's Missionary Union, helping draft the constitution and serving as its first correspondent secretary (a position that functioned as executive director

Executive director

Executive director is a term sometimes applied to the chief executive officer or managing director of an organization, company, or corporation. It is widely used in North American non-profit organizations, though in recent decades many U.S. nonprofits have adopted the title "President/CEO"...

).

In her role as the head of the organization, Annie Armstrong facilitated communication between denominational leaders, local congregations and missionaries on the field. She was an extensive letter writer, handwriting 18,000 letters in one year alone.

During her tenure as head of the WMU, Armstrong refused a salary and traveled at her own expense on behalf of the WMU.

Controversies and Conflicts

Beginning in 1895, Armstrong became involved in a series of controversies and conflicts with other WMU leaders. When Fannie E.S. Heck, the president of the Union, opposed her on an issue regarding how to integrate Sunday Schools in missionary work, Armstrong declared, "either she must resign or I shall!".

On the heels of the internal conflict within the WMU, Armstrong became embroiled in a denominational conflict over the establishment of a missionary training school at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary , located in Louisville, Kentucky, is the oldest of the six seminaries affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention . The seminary was founded in 1859, at Greenville, South Carolina. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to Louisville...

 in Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

. Armstrong opposed the establishment of a school on several grounds. She argued that the WMU's funds should be directed exclusively towards missionary work on the field. In 1906, Armstrong became outspoken in her opposition to the training school when it began accepting female students, holding that seminaries should educate exclusively men and a fear that it was laying groundwork for the ordination of women

Ordination of women

Ordination in general religious usage is the process by which a person is consecrated . The ordination of women is a regular practice among some major religious groups, as it was of several religions of antiquity...

.

In that same year, an editorial

Editorial

An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

critical of her opposition to the school appeared in a denominational newspaper. Taking the editorial and other criticism of her opposition as a personal attack, she resigned from the WMU, vowing to never again serve the denomination.

Though she kept her promise, she remained active in her local congregation and missions in the city of Baltimore.

However, towards the end of her life, she allowed an Easter collection of funds for home missions to be collected in her name, and made a conciliatory address to the WMU where she expressed the hope that the WMU would become "stronger with each successive year".

She died on December 20, 1938 in Baltimore, the year the WMU celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.

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