Francis Mason (missionary)

Francis Mason (2 April 1799 – 3 March 1874), American missionary and a naturalist,[1] was born in York, England.

[2] After working with his father as a shoemaker for several years, he emigrated in 1818 to the United States, and in Massachusetts was licensed to preach as a Baptist in 1827.

[2] In Burma, besides conducting a training college for native preachers and teachers at Tavoy, he translated the Bible into the two principal dialects of the Karens, the Sgaw and the Pwo (his translation being published in 1853), and Matthew, Genesis, and the Psalms into the Bghai dialect.

[2] He was a Freemason and briefly faced exclusion from his missionary work due to certain views held by his wife, Ellen Huntly Bullard Mason, one of them being that God's way of speaking to Adam was revealed in the designs of the Burmese women's dresses.

See his autobiography, The Story of a Working Man's Life, with Sketches of Travel in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (New York, 1870).