The Women's Auxiliary traces its founding to 1839 when a group of women organized the Evangelical Sewing Society of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia which later became the Dorcas Society. Earlier women's groups had played active roles in earlier years, especially the Female (or Women's) Missionary Society which existed from 1810 into the 1820s, as an auxiliary to the Philadelphia Baptist Mission Society. In 1873, the Women's Foreign Missionary Society was formed, followed in 1877 by the founding of the Women's Home Missionary Society. The overlapping of responsibilities led to the federation of the various women's organizations of the Church into the Women's Auxiliary in Jan 1897; the missions materials include material relating to the various missionary societies and groups with which the Church has been affiliated over its history and some of the missionary activities of the First Baptist Church.