Tarleton Perry Crawford was born May 8, 1821, in Warren County, Ky. His parents were John and Lucretia Crawford. At the beginning of 1848, he entered Union University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., being sustained in part by the West Tennessee Baptist Convention. He graduated in 1851 and had dedicated his life to mission work in China. At the close of 1850, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed him as missionary to Shanghai, China.

Martha E. Foster studied during 1844 -1845 at the Institute of Lafayette, Chambers County, Ala. She was converted and baptized in 1845 and in 1849 convicted that she was needed to spread the gospel as a missionary. Martha's teacher, Mr. Teague, wrote a letter to Dr. J. B. Taylor, Secretary of the Board, giving information of Martha's wishes to become a missionary, with her mind to incline to China field. The letter was given to Mr. Crawford who then traveled to Tuscaloosa County, Ala., Foster's Settlement, and on March 12, 1851, they were married at her home.

The Crawford’s spent fifty years in China as missionaries. T.P. Crawford died on April 2, 1902, Dawson County, Ala.

Resources:

• Hyatt, Irwin T. Our Ordered Lives Confess: Three Nineteenth-Century American Missionaries in East Shantung. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.
• Foster, L. S. Fifty Years in China: An Eventful Memoir of Tarleton Perry Crawford, D.D. Nashville, Tenn: Bayless-Pullen Company, 1909.
• Crawford, T. P. The Patriarchal Dynasties from Adam to Abraham: Shown to Cover 10,500 Years, and the Highest Human Life Only 187. Richmond, Va: Josiah Ryland, 1877.