Patsy Bolling Reynolds

Life

She was born in 1868 in Virginia. Records from the Presbyterian Historical Society give her birthplace as Amelia County. Korean biographical sources list her hometown as Richmond, her father as John Bolling, and her mother as Julia Tinsley Bolling. According to an article in a denominational newspaper, she worked as a teacher before her marriage.

In February 1892 the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), commonly known as the Southern Presbyterian Church, appointed her and her future husband, William Davis Reynolds, as missionaries to Korea. The two married and left the United States in September of that year. The seven members of the Southern Presbyterian pioneer party were the Reynoldses; William Junkin and his wife, Mary Leyburn Junkin; Lewis Tate and his sister, Mattie Tate; and Linnie Davis. They entered Korea in two groups, on October 18 and November 3, 1892; the Reynoldses are recorded as having arrived on November 3.

The couple first lived in Seoul and moved to Jeonju in 1897. Thereafter she worked alongside her husband in Seoul, Jeonju, Mokpo, Pyongyang, and elsewhere, and in 1937 the two retired together and returned to the United States. Her husband died in 1951 in Montreat, North Carolina. She then lived in the home of her youngest daughter, Ella, until her death in 1962.

Ministry and Accomplishments

She was one of those responsible for women's work in the early years of the Jeonju mission. Mattie Tate held weekly meetings for women, and Patsy Reynolds started a Sunday school for boys and girls. With the arrival of the physician Mattie Ingold, women's mission work in Jeonju is regarded as having quickly become established. In 1897 the first five converts in Jeonju received baptism.

Influence on the Korean Church

Her husband, William Reynolds, served as the first chairman of the Southern Presbyterian mission. As a member of the Bible translation committee, he labored for many years on the translation of the Bible into Korean, and he taught at the theological seminary in Pyongyang. Patsy Reynolds shared in this forty-five-year ministry from beginning to end. She bore four children in Korea; her second son, John Bolling Reynolds, served as a missionary from 1920 to 1930, teaching at Sinheung School in Jeonju and Sungil School in Gwangju, among others.

Assessment

She is remembered as one of the seven who opened the Southern Presbyterian mission, which was centered in the Honam region. Few sources, however, treat her individual work separately; most mention her in writings about her husband or about the pioneer party as a whole. More recently, studies of early women missionaries have drawn renewed attention to her as one who began women's work and Sunday school ministry in Jeonju. Within the sources examined, no record of criticism directed specifically at her has been found.