• Bio
  • Summary
  • Transcript
  • Download
Lottie Moon

Charlotte Digges "Lottie" Moon (1840–1912). Born on December 12, 1840, in Albemarle County, Virginia, to a wealthy planter family, Lottie Moon was a Southern Baptist missionary who served nearly 40 years in China. Educated at Virginia Female Seminary and Albemarle Female Institute, she earned a master’s degree in 1861, one of the first Southern women to do so. Initially skeptical of faith, she converted at 18 in 1858 during a revival, later teaching in Kentucky and Georgia. In 1873, at 32, she joined the Southern Baptist mission in Tengchow, Shandong, evangelizing and teaching girls. Moving to Pingtu in 1885, she adopted Chinese customs, planting churches and converting hundreds. Her 1887 letters sparked the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, raising millions for missions. Amid famines and the Boxer Rebellion, she gave her resources to the poor, dying of starvation-related illness on December 24, 1912, in Kobe, Japan, at 72, never married. Moon said, “I would that I had a thousand lives to give to the women of China.”