Albert William Bailey was born in Maine in 1873. He worked as a minister in New York before joining the Christian and Missionary Alliance to serve as a missionary at lumber camps in his home state. Bailey travelled to South Africa in 1909 as part of the South African General Mission to Durban.[1]
In 1910 he accompanied the leader of the General Mission, Frederick Stanley Arnot, to Kaondeland (in Rhodesia, modern-day Zambia) at his request as part of an initiative to spread Christianity into the upper reaches of the Zambezi River.[2] Later that year he established a mission at Chisalala and another at Lalafuta two years later. In 1913 the General Mission decided to expand into the neighbouring Portuguese colony of Angola.[1] Bailey crossed into Angola in 1914 and constructed a temporary house on the banks of the Luanginga River, in an area where no missionaries had operated before.[3]
Bailey was keen to translate the bible into the local language, Mbunda, and sat on a translation committee that worked towards this.[4] Bailey personally translated the Gospel of John into Mbunda in 1916 and ordered the printing of copies of this at Kamundongo in 1919.[5][6]
In 1917 Bailey had established a mission at Muye in Angola.[7] The Plymouth Brethren's Christian Mission in Many Lands began operations in the region in 1921 and the Southern African General Mission and Bailey co-operated closely with them.[2]
Bailey published the autobiographical Commission and Conquest in South Africa in South Carolina in 1928. He resigned from missionary work in 1948 and died in 1955.[1]
