Published by Primary Source Microfilm

Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions represents one of the largest and most significant collections in the United States of primary source material on foreign life as studied by American missionaries from the years 1824 to 1919.

This popular collection provides hundreds of volumes of letters written by the Board to missionary personnel and letters received by the Board from missionaries in the field. The reports generated from these missionary experiences formed the United States' earliest and, in some cases, only contacts with developing regions. This correspondence, reproduced from the Houghton Library archives, provides access to primary source material available from other sources.

Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions provides researchers in numerous fields with vivid descriptions of early 19th-century life in Africa, Asia, India, Ceylon, the Near East, China, Hawaii, the Pacific Islands, and North and South America.

Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions presents a wealth of graphic detail describing tribes and communities, which preceded all other western study of these areas.

Unit One: Letters to Domestic Correspondents, 1834-1919 (including letters to missionaries working with the Indians), Letters to Foreign Correspondents, 1834-1919
148 reels

Unit Two: Letters from Missionaries to Africa, 1834-1919
75 reels

Unit Three: Missions to Asia, 1827-1919 (Borneo, Siam, Singapore, China, Japan)
164 reels

Unit Four: Missions to Asia, 1812-1919 (India, Ceylon, Madura)
114 reels

Unit Five: The Near East, 1817-1919
219 reels

Unit Six: Missions on the American Continents and to the Islands of the Pacific, 1811-1919
138 reels

Complete Collection: 858 reels