Killingsworth, Mathilde

Mathilde Killingsworth (1904-1986) was an American missionary. She was born on March 14, 1904 in Fayette, Mississippi. She received a B.A. degree from the University of Mississippi, and an M.A. from Scarritt College. In 1936, she was commissioned and appointed to China as a missionary for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. When the Sino-Japanese war broke out, Killingsworth worked in the Tai Wha Christian Community Center, Korea, for six months before returning to China. Upon returning to China, she worked in the Shanghai refugee camps. From 1938 until 1941, she worked at the Hong Kong Institutional Church in Soochow.

Sometime after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Killingsworth was ordered to return to the United States. She was transferred to the China Office of the Board of Mission in New York City. By 1946, she was allowed to return to Soochow and resumed her work at the Moore Memorial Church in Shanghai. Killingsworth began working with the Methodist Church in Malaya in 1954. During her stay she worked with the Kampong Kapor Methodist Church in Singapore for a year and a half and then as a treasurer and field correspondent with the Women's Division in Malaya and Singapore for six and a half years.

Upon returning to the United States in 1963, she served as a field worker, along with her sister Louise, for the Department of Christian Social Relations and the Board of Christian Social Concerns. Then in 1965, both she and Louise, transferred from the World Division to the National Division of the Board of Missions of the Methodist Church. The reason for this transfer was to work as deaconesses in the Upper Mississippi Conference of the Central Jurisdiction. Killingsworth retired in 1969 and died in 1986.