Amelia Robertson Foss

Amelia Robertson Foss (August 19, 1840 – December 10, 1926) was an American Methodist leader. She was the first president of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (WFMS), an office she held from 1897 to 1908.

Early life Robertson was born in Peekskill, New York, the daughter of James Robertson and Mary Ann Canfield Robertson. Her father was a Methodist Sunday school superintendent, and her brother Charles Franklin Robertson became an Episcopal bishop.

Career Foss was "first lady" of Wesleyan University while her husband was the university's president, from 1875 to 1880. She was the first president of the Woman's Foreign MIssionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, beginning in 1897. She presided over the society's conventions, and toured in East Asia with her husband in 1906 and 1907. She was involved in overseeing Methodist Episcopal projects including a home for the aged, an orphanage, and a college fund. She was succeeded by another bishop's wife, Clotilda Lyon McDowell.

Personal life Robertson married widowed Methodist clergyman Cyrus David Foss in 1865. They had four children together; their youngest daughter died in infancy, and two of their children died in the 1910s. Her husband died in 1910, and she died in 1926, at the age of 86, in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.