Miss Isabella Thoburn, sister of Bishop Thoburn. An appeal for a medical woman soon followed. As a result of prompt and efficient measures to procure funds, the services of Miss Thoburn and of Clara A. Swain, M.D., were secured. These two women sailed from New York for India, via England, on November 3, 1869, reaching their destination early in January, 1870. These first laborers of the new society in a foreign field were cordially received, and soon entered upon a good work, Miss Thoburn organizing schools and superintending the work of Bible readers, and Dr. Swain's medical ability gaining for her admission to many places that were closed to others. This society sent to India, China, Korea, and Japan the first woman medical missionary ever received in those countries. Now, in its thirty-fourth year (1903) it has two hundred and sixty-five missionaries carrying on its work in far India, China, Japan, Korea, Africa, Bulgaria, Italy, South America, Mexico, and the Philippines, by means of women's colleges, high schools, seminaries, hospitals, dispensaries, day schools, and "settlement work," as it is called in America.
The society was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1884. Its receipts during the first year were four thousand five hundred forty-six dollars and eighty-six cents, and in the year 1903 four hundred ninety-one thousand ninety-one dollars and seventy-five cents, with a total from the beginning of six million eight hundred and fifty thousand eight hundred fifty-three dollars. Six Branches were organized the first year. There are now eleven, the first the New England, and the eleventh the Columbia River Branch.
The first number of the society's first periodical, the Heathen Woman's Friend, appeared in June, 1869. Mrs. Warren, wife of William F. Warren, D.D., President of Boston University, was its editor for twenty-four years, beginning at the time when women editors were so rare as to make the position one of isolation. Financially it was a plunge into the unexplored wilderness, there being no money behind the paper and no influence, except that of a handful of women whose hearts and brains were devoted to sending to foreign fields their first missionaries. But the result proved to be a financial success, for in thirty years it not only paid its own expenses, but contributed over thirty thousand dollars for the publication and scattering of leaflets and other missionary literature which has proved to be the " leaves of the tree for the healing of the nations." Mrs. Warren penned her last editorial, "The Bugle-call," on Thursday, January 5, 1893, two days before the close of her earthly life.
Harriet Cornelia Merrick Warren, daughter of John M. and Mary J. Merrick, was born in Wilbraham, Mass., September 15, 1843, and was educated at Wilbraham Academy, of which her father was a trustee. Married April 14, 1861, to the Rev. William F. Warren, she went with him to Bremen, Germany, where he served for some time as a professor in the Missions-Anstalt. Possessed of scholarly tastes and capabilities, Mrs. Warren while abroad continued to cultivate her mind, successfully pursuing advanced studies in history, languages, literature, music, and art, also spending some time profitably with her husband in travelling. " She returned after five years a large-minded and thoroughly equipped woman, full of resources, and with good practical judgment and tact that admirably fitted her for the position .she was to occupy as the wife of a man at the head of one of the most important educational enterprises in the church and in the country." She was an untiring worker in the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, its first recording secretary, and for years president of the New England Branch, and an accomplished editor.
Louise Maxning Hodgkins, M.A., Mrs. Warren's successor in the editorial chair, has won for herself a name in both literary and educational fields. Born in Ipswich, Mass., August 5, 1846, daughter of Daniel Lummuis and Mary (Willett) Hodgkins, she is a descendant of early .settlers of that historic town. For two years in her girlhood she attended the Ipswich Seminary, then under the charge of Mrs. Eunice P. Cowles. At Wesieyan Academy, Wilbraham, where she was next enrolled as a pupil, she was grailuated in 1870. For six years (1870-76) she was connected with
