Francesca Law French

Francesca Law French (Chinese: 馮貴石; pinyin: Féng Guìshí; 12 December 1871 – 2 August 1960) was a British Protestant Christian missionary in China. She served with the China Inland Mission.

French was born in Bruges, Belgium, the second daughter of English parents John Erington French and his first cousin Frances Elizabeth French. She was educated at the secondary school in Geneva, Switzerland. Her older sister, Evangeline F. French had gone to China as a missionary in 1893. Francesca wanted to go to China also, but she remained in England to care for her aging mother. After her mother died, in 1908 she joined her sister in China.

The French sisters were stationed with Mildred Cable in Huozhou, Shanxi and travelled constantly in the surrounding area. They became known as the "trio." Francesca was the quietest of the three and described as sensitive, sympathetic, bookish, and artistic. After 20 years in Huozhou, the trio believed that the mission should be turned over to Chinese leaders and the three applied to work in relatively unknown, largely Muslim western China. Although there were doubts that women should be assigned to this region their proposal was finally accepted in 1923.

In 1913, they travelled to Gansu Province, Xinjiang and the Gobi Desert, and a few years later they adopted a young Tartar girl, a deaf mute, who remained with them when they returned to Britain.

For most of the next thirteen years, in the words of Mildred Cable: "From Etzingol to Turpan, from Spring of Wine to Chuguchak, we ... spent long years in following trade-routes, tracing faint caravan tracks, searching out innumerable by-paths and exploring the most hidden oases. ... Five times we traversed the whole length of the desert, and in the process we had become part of its life" A reviewer said of Cable and Francesca French's book, The Gobi Desert, that "this may be the best of many good books about Central Asia and the old Silk Road through the deserts of Western China."

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