Allen Gardiner,
Founder of the South American Missionary Society
6 September -- Commemoration
If celebrated as a Lesser Festival,
Common of Missionaries, page 503
Allen Francis Gardiner was born in 1794 and joined the Royal
Navy as a young man. He resigned in 1826 and, on the death
of his wife in 1834, dedicated himself to missionary work.
He pioneered a mission to the Zulus in South Africa for the
Church Missionary Society and founded the city of Durban.
He then went to South America to investigate the possibility
of evangelism amongst the indigenous tribes. He travelled
extensively and founded the South American Missionary
Society in 1844. With seven other missionaries, he died of
starvation in 1851 on the shores of Tierra del Fuego.