Annie Laura Temple (August 3, 1865 – June 23, 1949) was an American teaching missionary, based in Mexico.

Early life

Temple was born in

Jefferson County, Pennsylvania Jefferson County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 44,492. Its county seat is Brookville. The county was established on March 26, 1804, from part of Lycoming County and later organized ...

, the daughter of Samuel Wylie Temple and Annie J. Smith Temple. She trained as a teacher at the State Normal School in Edinboro, and attended

Allegheny College he, תגל ערבה ותפרח כחבצלת , mottoeng = "Add to your faith, virtue and to your faith, knowledge" (2 Peter 1:5)"The desert shall rejoice and the blossom as the rose" (Isaiah 35:1) , faculty = 193 ...

, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1893 and a master's degree. She earned a second master's degree in

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

Career

Temple was a school teacher in Pennsylvania as a young woman. She went to work in Mexico under the auspices of the

Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church (WFMS of the MEC) was one of three Methodist organizations in the United States focused on women's foreign missionary services, the others being the WFMS of the Free Methodist C ...

. She was appointed principal of ''Hijas de Juarez'' school in Mexico City in 1903. She was founder and director of the Sara L. Keen Methodist College in Mexico City, which offered commercial and teacher-training courses. She was president of the Mexican Education Society. In 1912, Temple was in the United States to attend missionary conferences in Baltimore and elsewhere. Temple was the only American missionary who did not evacuate the city in 1914, during the

Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...

. "If I were in the United States, I would volunteer to come here for Red Cross service. Now that I am here, why should I go away when there is an opportunity for serving?" She successfully protected her school from violence and damage. In 1915, she spoke at a missionary conference in Pennsylvania, and the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society meeting in San Francisco, and attended the

Panama–Pacific International Exposition The Panama–Pacific International Exposition was a world's fair held in San Francisco, California, United States, from February 20 to December 4, 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely se ...

in San Francisco. In 1916, she was a delegate to the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America, held in Panama. After the Revolution, she founded and ran Granja, a farm school for orphaned boys, in

Chapultepec Chapultepec, more commonly called the "Bosque de Chapultepec" (Chapultepec Forest) in Mexico City, is one of the largest city parks in Mexico, measuring in total just over 686 hectares (1,695 acres). Centered on a rock formation called Chapultep ...

. Temple was involved in archaeological projects in Mexico, and considered an expert on Mexican

codices The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

. In 1923, in her fifties, she was part of a project led by

Byron Cummings Byron Cummings (September 20, 1860 – May 21, 1954) is known as the dean of Southwestern archaeology. Cummings served as the University of Arizona’s 9th president (1927–28), Arizona State Museum’s first director (1915–38), founding head ...

, studying ancient

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

''pueblos'' in Northern Arizona.

Personal life and legacy

Temple died at her home in Mexico in 1949, aged 83 years. One of the schools she founded was renamed the Laura Temple School. Allegheny College had a Laura Temple Scholarship Fund.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Temple, Laura 1865 births 1949 deaths American women educators American missionaries Allegheny College alumni People from Jefferson County, Pennsylvania American archaeologists Edinboro University of Pennsylvania alumni Members of Phi Kappa Phi