Henrietta Shuck

Henrietta Hall Shuck
Missionary to China
Born	October 28, 1817 Kilmarnock, Virginia, USA
Died	November 27, 1844 Hong Kong, China

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.

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. She was baptised at a camp meeting sponsored by Morattico Baptist Church at age 14.

After moving to Richmond, Virginia upon the death of her mother, Henrietta studied at the Classical and English School and taught Sunday School at the First Baptist Church in Richmond. She met Jehu Lewis Shuck of Lewisburg, Greenbrier County, a student at the Baptist Seminary. Both belonged to the American Baptist Board for Foreign Missions. Rev. Shuck and his fellow student Robert Dunlavy Davenport (1809–1848) were ordained on August 30, and each married on 18 September 1835. Henrietta was 17 years old and her friend Mary Frances Greenhow Roper (1819–1896) just 15.

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.

In September 1836, the small Shuck family arrived in Macao, about 90 miles from Canton, and where the Chinese government allowed foreigners. The missionaries worked there about six years, until the end of the first Opium War (1839–1842). Henrietta established a small boarding school, with two to eight pupils at a time. She also bore another son, Ryland, and a delicate daughter, Henrietta.