[Mary Hewitt Mitchell THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED CHURCH OF NEW HAVEN (United Church of New Haven, 1942) p. 87-90]
Taught 1 year in Russell's Military School, New Haven, Conn. Taught 1 year in Edwards School, Stockbridge, Mass. Ordained Congregational minister 1874. Missionary with American Board of Congregational Foreign Missions at Ahmednagar, India on August 12, 1874. Presented by Queen Victoria January 1, 1901 with the Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal for public service in India. Hyde lecturer on foreign missions, Andover Theological Seminary 1904-5. Author of "Missions from the Modern View"; "An Interpretation of India's Religious History".
Source WHO WAS WHO IN AMERICA v 1
I ran across his testimony to the Royal Commission on Decentralization see Vol VIII Evidence taken in Bombay 1908 CD.4366 xlv.679
"The most distinguished member of the family, Robert Allan Hume (1847-1929), was ordained in the Third Church, May 9, 1874. He was a missionary from 1874 to 1928, and a member of the Third and United Churches from 1864 to 1929. A graduate of Yale College (1868) as an honor student and of Andover Theological Seminary in 1873, he taught for two years after graduation from Yale, one of them in General Russell's School in New Haven. He sailed for India in August, 1874, with his wife, Abbie Burgess Hume, the daughter of missionaries and grandniece of Mary Lyon. He was assigned to the Ahmednagar District of the Marathi Mission. It was in this same mission that two young people who went later from the church were stationed —Mr. and Mrs. William McCance. Here Mr. Hume found one village church, two preachers, two Bible women, one teacher, and a few other Indian helpers. The Mission buildings were few and inadequate, but in his fifty years there he superintended the erection of eighteen substantial buildings and many smaller ones ; churches with trained pastors were organized; many schools were started, till gradually the leadership of all this work was turned over to the Indians.
Mr. Hume found time to do much literary work and in Queen Victoria's last Honor List was awarded a gold medal for distinguished public service, especially in connection with relief work in time of famines.
In 1886 when he was about to return to India from a furlough, trouble arose with the American Board over a hope he expressed incidentally in a speech at Andover that the heathen who had never heard of Christ might not be condemned to everlasting perdition. At this time the actual management of the Board was in the hands of good but narrow and very conservative men who felt that such a doctrine would "cut the nerve of missions." When it was rumored that he might not be sent back to India because of his theological views, the United Church acted. A letter signed by the pastor and board of deacons was sent, setting forth Mr. Hume's special and inherited fitness for missionary work, telling of the results which had already come from his labors, and of the unanimous wish of the Mission that he be returned. It questioned the right of the Prudential Committee of the Board to decide the Theological fitness of missionaries and said that this was a matter to be settled by a Church Council regularly called for that purpose. Mr. Hume would not change his views, but after much delay and discussion he was allowed to return to his work "with a gospel of hope instead of doom." The stand taken by the United Church went far to establish the principle that it is the churches only that should decide the theological fitness of their members to be missionaries and not the Board Secretaries. The churches thus regained self-governing functions which they were in danger of losing. The missionaries were assured freedom of thought and action.
By the wish of the Mission Mr. Hume remained in India long after the retiring age. When he returned to America he was active in preaching, speaking, and writing for the cause. He died in 1929 at the age of eighty-two, regarded as "the outstanding missionary of the American Board in his day."
His second wife, Katie Fairbanks Hume, also from a missionary family, shared his work for more than forty years. Four of his children have been missionaries in India—Ruth, in medical work as the representative of Wellesley College ; Robert Ernest in educational work, and his wife in teaching nurses and working with women and children ; Wilson in Y. M. C. A. work ; Hannah Hume Lee Calder as wife of a missionary and later as a missionary herself. A sister, Sarah (1840-1903), who went to India
to care for her brother's motherless children, was never a cornsioned missionary, but for five years did the work of one. After her return to America she was for fourteen years city missionary under the Woman's Board of the City Missionary Association. Her special work was among women and children, and one result of her visits to their homes and knowledge of their ignorance and need was the organization of the Visiting Nurse Association.
