Sarah Poulton Kalley

Sarah Poulton Kalley or Sarah Poulton Wilson (25 May 1825 – 8 August 1907) was a British missionary to Brazil who helped create a Portuguese language hymnal still in use today. She and her husband Robert Reid Kalley are credited with founding one of the first Congregational (and Protestant) churches in Brazil. This would in time become the Union of Congregational Churches in Brazil.

Life Sarah Poulton Wilson was born in Nottingham in 1825 to parents who were religious Nonconformist and political Reformists. Politician Henry Wilson was her half-brother. Her father had homes in Nottingham and Torquay. Sarah was well travelled and educated and she had talents for water colour painting and languages.

She led a group studying the Bible at Abbey Road Congregational chapel in the British seaside town of Torquay where she was caring for her brother. Robert Reid Kalley and his first wife Margaret Crawford had been doing missionary work among the poor on the Portuguese island of Madeira when they, along with their supporters, were arrested and expelled by anti-Protestants, taking temporary refuge on the island of Trinidad. The Kalleys spent two years seeking Christian converts among the followers of Islam, Judaism and Nestorianism in Malta, Egypt and Palestine, where it is believed Sarah became acquainted with Kalley. Following the death of Margaret, Kalley wed Sarah in Torquay in 1852. The Kalleys went to America and they served in the Springfield Portuguese Presbyterian Church 1853–1854 in Springfield, Illinois, where Sarah oversaw the Congregational music.

Sarah advocated the power of faith through song, and the couple created a hymnal in the Portuguese language. The book contained original revivalist hymns as well as translations of hymns and psalms. , co-authored by the Kalleys in 1861, was the first Protestant hymnal published in Brazil and became an inter-denominational hymnal, which is still in use today. The 1959 edition of the hymnal credits Sarah with authorship of 72 of the songs. She died in Edinburgh in 1907. The missionary society she had founded struggled on until 1913 when its fund-raising started to fail and it merged with a similar charity.