Mary Evelyn Fredenburg

Mary Evelyn Fredenburg was born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, the daughter of David Ralph Fredenburg and Mary Elizabeth Davies Fredenburg.[1] Her parents were both born in North Dakota; her father was an electrician. As a girl, she moved to Orlando, Florida with her parents and younger siblings; she graduated from Orlando High School in 1940.[2] She attended Mars Hill College, and trained as a nurse at Southern Baptist Hospital in New Orleans.[3] She later earned a master's degree in education from the University of Minnesota while on furlough in the 1960s.[4]

The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed Fredenburg to a mission post in Nigeria in 1947.[5][6] She taught at a boys' school for two years,[7] then worked as a registered nurse at Eku Baptist Hospital, and was director of the hospital's nursing school.[8][9] She also co-founded a church, Eseroghene Baptist Church. During furloughs in the United States, she was a frequent speaker at Southern Baptist churches and events,[10][11][12] sometimes also preparing "an African style dinner" for her audiences.[13] She spoke at conferences on medical missions in Oklahoma in 1954,[14] and in St. Louis, Missouri in 1963.[4] She retired from her work in Nigeria in 1988,[3] and ran The Shepherd's Shop, a Christian bookstore in Cadiz, Kentucky, in her retirement.[15]

Fredenburg died in January 2020, on her 97th birthday, in Cadiz, Kentucky.[3] The Little River Mission Board of Cadiz named a fund the "Mev Fredenburg Mission Fund" in her memory.[15]