A Pilgrim with a Poet's Soul: George A. Simons (1874-1952): A Pioneer Missionary in Russia and the Baltic States (1907-1928)

George Albert Simons (1874-1952) of New York State was the first and only American missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church appointed as superintendent of the Russia Mission. He arrived in St. Petersburg in 1907 during the reign of the Tsar Nicholas II. He succeeded in registering the first Methodist congregation in St. Petersburg in 1912, based on the registration of the Methodist congregation in 1906 in Kaunas, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Imperial Empire. Simons soon mastered ...