Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/552

Rh be. Her death in January, 1877, caused widespread sorrow, not only to friends in this land, but to the missionary fields all over the world. Her name has been perpetuated by the Woman's Union Missionary Society in Calcutta, India, by calling their home the Doremus Home.

Born in Shelbourne, Massachusetts, in 1816. She was a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, and a missionary to Persia. She was the first unmarried woman to enter that field. Her work in Oroomia, where the women were fearfully degraded (and it was considered a disgrace for a woman to learn to read) was most earnest and valuable. The poverty and intense prejudice of the people made her task a trying one, but her efforts were crowned with great success. Her work spread in the smaller places of the mountains, and the school which has been established there is a monument to her energy and fearless Christian faith. She returned to America in 1847, and was president of Mount Holyoke Seminary for a brief time, but her health failing, she died July 26, 1864, in her forty-eighth year.

She we*nt with her husband, Rev. R. B. Lyth, M. D., to the South Sea missions in 1836, living among the cannibals of the Fiji and Polynesian Islands, and suffering the most frightful experiences and sickening sights among the cannibal tribes of these islands. Nothing but a deep sense of duty and a strong determination to perform it, added to her religious faith, could have made a woman of refinement endure the experiences she was called upon to witness. The incident is told of how she saved the lives of six women out of thirteen, who were killed for a feast of one of these tribes. Braving every danger, she appeared before this cannibal king to beg for mercy and he listened to her pleadings and spared their lives. She lived to see a great work accomplished, the islands Christianized, the Sabbath observed. On September 18, 1890, Mrs. Lyth died.

Her work as a missionary was among the people of Liberia, Africa. She was born in 1806 in New York State, of Methodist parents. She sailed for Liberia, June 15, 1837, the first time. She made many trips back and forth on account of her health, dying November, 1857.

Her work among the Mexicans forms a thrilling missionary story. Born in 1811, dying at her home in Bloomington, Illinois, December 7, 1888, she had great faith in the power and ability of women. In 1840 a call came for missionary teachers to go to the Mississippi valley, foreign immigration having brought in a great many Roman Catholics to that portion of the country. Miss Rankin responded