Cyrus Kingsbury was a Christian missionary active among the American Indians in the nineteenth century.
17 Facts About Cyrus Kingsbury
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Cyrus Kingsbury first worked with the Cherokee and founded Brainerd Mission near Chickamauga, Tennessee, later he served the Choctaw of Mississippi.
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Cyrus Kingsbury was known as "the Father of the Missions" in Indian Territory.
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Cyrus Kingsbury was raised in Worcester, Massachusetts by an aunt and uncle.
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Cyrus Kingsbury then studied at Andover Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1815.
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Cyrus Kingsbury was ordained by the Congregational Church in Ipswich, Massachusetts in 1815.
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Cyrus Kingsbury was first sent to Tennessee in 1817, where he began ministering to the Cherokee tribe and founded Brainerd Mission near Chickamauga.
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Sarah and Cyrus Kingsbury were determined not to wait, but decided to meet in New Orleans.
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Sarah made the long, arduous ocean voyage unaccompanied from her parental home, while Cyrus Kingsbury came from Tennessee on horseback.
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In 1818, Cyrus Kingsbury was sent to Mississippi by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and assigned to minister to the Choctaw Nation that lived there.
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Cyrus Kingsbury selected a site on the Yazoo River, about 400 miles southwest of Brainerd.
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In 1820, Cyrus Kingsbury chose a location in the northeastern part of present-day Oktibbeha County, Mississippi that he deemed a suitable site for another mission.
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In 1824, Cyrus Kingsbury married Electa May Well-suited to working as his partner as a missionary, she saw to the raising of Cyrus Kingsbury' sons.
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Cyrus Kingsbury was one of four Mayhew missionaries credited with founding the First Presbyterian Church of Columbus, Mississippi in May, 1829.
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One source has claimed that Cyrus Kingsbury established Pine Ridge Mission in 1818, at a site 1 mile north of Doaksville, and that the mission became the Choctaw Female Seminary in 1842.
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Cyrus Kingsbury has been credited with building the church in the Choctaw town of Boggy Depot in 1840.
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Cyrus Kingsbury's papers are in the Western History Collection at the University of Oklahoma library.