Viette Brown Sprague
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February 12, 1846
Viette Brown Sprague | |
|---|---|
 Viette Brown Sprague as a young woman. | |
| Born | Viette Isabel Brown February 12, 1846 Newark, Wayne County, New York |
| Died | November 2, 1923 (aged 77) Manchester, New York |
| Occupations | Educator, Christian missionary in China |
Viette Brown Sprague (February 12, 1846 – November 2, 1923) was an American teaching missionary in Kalgan, China. She described her experiences during the Boxer Rebellion in a published memoir.
Viette Isabel Brown was born in Newark, New York, the daughter of Hiram Leicester Brown and Hester Ann Bonker Brown. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1871.[1]
Career
As a young woman, Sprague was a teacher in New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. After her mother died and her father remarried, she went to China, married at Tientsin, and became a missionary under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; in 1893, she began teaching at a mission girls' school in Kalgan, China (her husband had been there since 1874).[2][3] The Spragues temporarily fled to Mongolia and were rescued by Russians in the Gobi Desert in 1900,[4] during the unrest of the Boxer Rebellion.[5][6] They were included in a list of "Foreigners Who Have Probably Been Slain" on the front page of a San Francisco newspaper published in July 1900.[7] She wrote and published an account of her experiences,[8] and wrote shorter items about the Kalgan mission and about anti-footbinding efforts, for American church publications.[3][9]
The Spragues recovered from their ordeal in the United States, then returned to Kalgan in 1902, and stayed there until 1910.[1][10] While at Kalgan, she worked with fellow American missionaries Abbie Goodrich Chapin and Mary E. Andrews on their visits from Tungzhou.[11] After retiring to Shortsville, New York, she was active as a church worker and temperance lecturer.[12]
