1925 Margaret gave birth to Eleanor Louise, who died only four months later. In 1927, while on furlough in Englewood, Colorado, Margaret gave birth to her first daughter, Arlene, and in 1928, two weeks after returning to Fort-Sibut in Ubangi-Shari, she gave birth to a second daughter, Marian. Working as a nurse at Ippy In 1928, Fort-Sibut's local French administrator Félix Éboué asked the Lairds to open a mission station among the Banda people of central Ubangi-Shari at a town called Ippy in Ouaka Region. The French wanted the Lairds to help gain the trust of the Banda in this region where diamonds and gold had been found and was beginning to be exploited. So the Lairds moved to Ippy, where Margaret worked as a nurse until 1964. The dispensary she helped establish at Ippy became an important medical center for the whole region. She described her life as a missionary in the CAR in a book entitled They Called Me Mama (1975). Working on Sango materials Margaret Laird contributed significantly to the preparation of the Bible in the Sango language. References Davis, Rebecca. The Good News Must Go Out: Stories of God at Work in the Central African Republic. Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2011. Laird, Margaret Nicholl with Raymond B. Buker and Phil Landrum. They Called Me Mama. Chicago: Moody Press, 1975. Strong, Polly. Burning Wicks. Cleveland, OH: Baptist Mid-Missions, 1984. Rosenau, Ina E. God in Some of My Valley Days. Faith Printing Company: 1971. Hill, Robert Hill, "The Christianization of the Central African Republic," Ph.D. diss., Grace Theological Seminary, 1969. Hamilton, Benjamin A. "The Background, Establishment, and Expansion of Protestant Missions in French Equatorial Africa," Th.D. thesis, Grace Theological Seminary, 1959, Baptist missionaries in the Central Africa Republic Baptist missionaries from the United States 1897 births 1983 deaths Female Christian missionaries American people of Finnish descent American expatriates in the Central African Republic Christian medical missionaries Recipients of the Legion of Honour 20th-century Baptists