Gertrude Howe was born September 13, 1846 in Poughkeepsie, New York to Isaac and Elizabeth Howe. According to secondary sources, Howe’s family were Quaker and staunch abolitionists. They moved from New York to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where they were part of the Underground Railroad. The family relocated to Lansing in 1850. Howe attended Lansing’s First Ward School. At age 15, she began teaching there, and by 1866 was appointed principal.
Gertrude Howe (from The University of Michigan in China by David Ward and Eugene Chen)
Howe studied agriculture at Michigan Agricultural College from 1870 to 1871. During college, she lived with her family in Lansing and continued to work as a schoolteacher. After leaving M.A.C., Howe attended the University of Michigan (1871), and graduated from Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University) in 1872.
In September 1872, Howe travelled to China for Methodist Episcopal missionary work with the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society. Howe and Lucy H. Hoag (1844-1909) founded boarding schools for girls, who often did not have educational opportunities in China. The parents did not see the benefit of having their daughters receive an education, so the missionaries had to pay the parents to allow the girls to attend. Howe fostered and adopted many orphaned or abandoned girls in China. She later brought four Chinese women to the University of Michigan to study medicine. Her adopted daughter, Ida Kahn (Kang Cheng), was one of the first Chinese women to become a medical doctor.
Gertrude Howe’s 1914 US Consular registration (from Ancestry.com)
Howe lived and worked in China for 57 years. She died in Nanchang on December 12, 1928. In 1947, the Central Methodist Church in Lansing honored Howe’s legacy with a bronze plaque.
Gertrude Howe’s 1920 US passport application (from Ancestry.com)
Written by Megan Badgley-Malone. Original Blog Post.
