Henrietta Hall Shuck

Henrietta Hall Shuck (28 October 1817 – 27 November 1844) was the first American female missionary to China and the first Western woman to live in Hong Kong.

Early and family life Henrietta was born in Kilmarnock, Virginia, to Colonel Addison Hall (1797–1871) and his wife. At 13 she was sent to a girls' school in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Career Days after both couples were set apart for foreign missions at a service conducted at Richmond's First Baptist Church, they embarked for China (and Siam for the Davenports). They stopped in Burma and Henrietta visited the grave of Ann Judson (whose memoirs had inspired her), but did not meet her husband Rev. Adoniram Judson. Their ship reached Singapore in March, 1836, where Henrietta gave birth to their first child, Lewis (named for her father and grandfather), and the Davenports sailed to Bangkok. The Shucks were the first Baptist missionaries in Hong Kong. Rev. Shuck established the first Baptist church in the British colony (Queen's Road Baptist Chapel; now called Hong Kong Baptist Church), and two more soon followed. They converted Yong Seen Sarng, their language teacher. A year after their arrival, Henrietta set up a boarding school for about 15 pupils, both boys and girls. This pioneered education for Chinese girls. By 1844, the expanded school had 32 boarders, commemorative marker at her birthplace and pageants in Norfolk, Bluefield, Newport News, Lynchburg and Danville. They also sponsored a biography, endowed two scholarships at the University of Shanghai, sent Dr. George W. Truett (President of the World Baptist Alliance) on a missionary tour of Southern Baptist mission stations in China and brought Mrs. F.Y.O. Ling (secretary of the All-China Women's Missionary Union) to the United States for a tour, sponsored two missionaries and a day school in China, as well as built a Henrietta Shuck Memorial Chapel in Shiu Hing Field. Her former house, however, was torn down in 1957 to make way for an auto-repair business. The name of Henrietta Secondary School in Hong Kong commemorates Mrs. Henrietta Hall Shuck.