Laos Mission

After a brief period of evangelistic success, the mission underwent a time of persecution in 1869, during which two converts were martyred.

In 1885, the mission sponsored the founding of the Presbytery of North Laos, officially under the Synod of New York City, to give oversight to the churches.

By the 1890s, the mission increasingly emphasized medical and educational institutional work, founding boarding schools, such as Prince Royal's College and Chiang Rai Witthayakhom School, American printing house (Wangsingkam), hospitals and dispensaries in each of the stations.

Beginning in the 1890s, the majority of the mission's members campaigned for mission expansion into the Shan States of Burma, which brought it into a protracted, time-consuming territorial dispute with the American Baptists in Burma.

For a brief period from 1911 to 1914, the mission's church grew rapidly in the wake of malaria and smallpox epidemics in various parts of northern Siam.