Lizzie M. Guthrie

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Lizzie M. Guthrie (1838–May 15, 1880) was an American Christian missionary. She was born in Bakerstown, Pennsylvania, into a family with a strong church background; her father was Rev. Joseph Guthrie, and her mother died when she was two. She was raised by her grandfather and later adopted by an aunt, moving to Philadelphia where she grew up as a fashionable young woman before feeling a call to Christian service and missions.

In 1868 Guthrie joined the Woman’s Union Missionary Society of New York and went to India. The climate there harmed her health, and she returned home after a few years. The voyage helped her recover, and when she reached Japan she regained her strength and served there for six years. In Japan she faced funding limits but still admitted two girls to her school, which later brought support from the Methodist Protestant Church.

Guthrie helped the women of the Methodist Protestant Church organize a new mission society, the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Protestant Church, and she traveled to promote it. She was chosen as the first foreign missionary of the new society. To support the work, the two organizations agreed to unite temporarily to send her to Japan.

She left Pittsburgh on April 23, 1880, and planned to sail from San Francisco for Japan, initially set for May 10 but delayed to May 22. While waiting, she fell ill and died on May 15, 1880, in San Francisco. Her body was brought back to Pennsylvania and buried in Allegheny Cemetery. Her will left her money and effects to the Woman’s Society of the Methodist Protestant Church; her brother, Dr. Hugh L. Guthrie, carried out her wishes after her death.