Gertrude Howe

In her teens, Howe taught school in Lansing, Michigan, and was appointed principal of a primary school when she was 20 years old. In 1872, Howe went to Kiukiang (Jiujiang) in China,^[4] as a missionary under the auspices of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.^[5] She and medical missionary Lucy H. Hoag founded a girls' high school in 1873, requiring students to have unbound feet to enroll.^[6] She adopted and raised four Chinese daughters,^[4][7] including Kang Cheng, known as Ida Kahn.^[8][9] She taught her daughters English, and mentored several other Chinese students who continued their educations in the United States,^[10][11] including Mary Stone,^[12] Phebe Stone, and Ilien Tang.^[13][14][15] She also assisted later women missionaries in China, including Welthy Honsinger Fisher.^[16] "While she spared no pains in laying broad educational foundations," according to a biographical pamphlet for church use, "she never lost sight of character-making, to which she gave the prominent place."^[4]

Howe moved to Chungking in 1883, and opened another girls' school; but her new school was destroyed within a few years, and she returned to Kiukiang. She translated a Methodist hymnal, and a history of the Reformation, for her students to use.^[13] She spoke about her work in the United States during her visits, including in Detroit in 1893,^[17] in Pittsburgh in 1909,^[18] in Brookline in 1919,^[19] and in Lansing in 1920.^[20]

Howe's sister, Delia, joined her work in China from 1879 to 1882.^[21] Delia Howe became a physician in Detroit.^[22]

Howe lived in Nanchang with Ida Kahn in her later years. She died there in 1928, after years of declining health, at the age of 82.^[23][24] Kahn wrote an English-language obituary of Howe, listing out her daughters Ida, Julia, Fannie, and Belle,^[4] and grandchildren, and detailing the specifics of her funeral.^[7]