Viette Brown Sprague (February 12, 1846 – November 2, 1923) was an American teaching missionary in

Kalgan Zhangjiakou (; ; ) also known as Kalgan and by several other names, is a prefecture-level city in northwestern Hebei province in Northern China, bordering Beijing to the southeast, Inner Mongolia to the north and west, and Shanxi to the southwe ...

, China. She described her experiences during the

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

in a published memoir.

Early life

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 Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United States. ...

in 1871.

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). The Spragues temporarily fled to Mongolia and were rescued by Russians in the

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (Chinese: 戈壁 (沙漠), Mongolian: Говь (ᠭᠣᠪᠢ)) () is a large desert or brushland region in East Asia, and is the sixth largest desert in the world. Geography The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast an ...

in 1900, during the unrest of the Boxer Rebellion. 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. She wrote and published an account of her experiences, and wrote shorter items about the Kalgan mission and about anti-

footbinding Foot binding, or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls in order to change their shape and size. Feet altered by footbinding were known as lotus feet, and the shoes made for these feet were kno ...

efforts, for American church publications. The Spragues recovered from their ordeal in the United States, then returned to Kalgan in 1902, and stayed there until 1910. While at Kalgan, she worked with fellow American missionaries

Abbie Goodrich Chapin Abbie Goodrich Chapin RRC (April 2, 1868 – July 24, 1956) was an American missionary in China. In 1901 she became the first American decorated with the Royal Red Cross, for services rendered at Peking's International Hospital during the Boxer ...

and Mary E. Andrews on their visits from Tungzhou. After retiring to

Shortsville, New York Shortsville, officially the Village of Shortsville, is a Village (New York), village in Ontario County, New York, Ontario County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 1,439 at the time of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 ...

, she was active as a church worker and temperance lecturer.

Personal life

Viette Brown married a widower, Christian missionary William Parmelee Sprague, in 1893. She was widowed when William Sprague died in 1919, and she died in 1923, aged 77 years, in

Manchester, New York Manchester is a town in Ontario County, New York, United States. The population was 9,406 at the 2020 census. The town was named after one of its villages, which in turn was named after the original Manchester in England. It was formed in 1822 f ...

. Her papers are in the collection of

Archives and Special Collections.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sprague, Viette Brown 1846 births 1923 deaths Mount Holyoke College alumni People from Newark, New York American Christian missionaries Christian missionaries in China American expatriates in China Female Christian missionaries Missionary educators