Miss Mary Cressey was the first missionary to go from our South Dakota Baptist churches to aforeign field. She was born in 1878 to a mission-minded family in Des Moines, Iowa. It was said of her mother, "To think of Mrs. Cressey was to think of missions." Her girlhood was spent in Huron and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She was baptized in 1892 in the First Baptist Church of Huron. She graduated in 1908 from a missionary training course in Chicago, and was appointed that same year by the Women's Foreign Mission Society to go to Ningpo, China. Later, she became the principal of a school for women at Ningpo and also continued her evangelistic ministry in the surrounding areas. The Christian Homemakers School, one of the very few schools of its kind, was instrumental in launching the present Christian Home and Family Life program. She was in the field at the time Japanese forces were making deep inroads into China during World War II, and was interned in Shanghai for a few months before returning to the states.She retired in 1944 after 35 years of service, and in 1946 was married to W. H. James. They had several happy years together before his death. There was always a close bond between Miss Cressey and Miss Mary Laughlin, missionary to Burma, after Miss Laughlin's father married a sister of Miss Cressey following the death of his first wife.

By 1956, she'd moved to Huron to live with her widowed sister, Mrs. C. F. Laughlin. While there, she ministered sunshine and joy to all in the First Baptist Church. For ten years Mary had a great influence for good in the churches at Bonesteel and Huron. In October 1956, after a long and painful illness, she accepted the decision to enter the hospital as if she were looking forward to the glorious culmination of all that life had meant. She made a point before she would leave the house of seeing that her World Fellowship Offering and church envelopes were well filled.