Martha Jane Cunningham
Martha Jane Cunningham | |
|---|---|
| Born | 3 June 1856 Halifax, Nova Scotia |
| Died | 22 April 1916 (age 59) Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario |
| Occupations | Missionary, educator, school principal |
Martha Jane Cunningham (3 June 1856 – 22 April 1916) was a Canadian missionary educator in Japan. She was first principal of Shizuoka Eiwa Girls' School in Shizuoka, which was founded in 1887.
Early life and education
[edit | edit source]Cunningham was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the daughter of William Cunningham and Matilda Ellen Burns Cunningham. Her father was a clothier.[1] Both of her parents were born in Ireland.
Career
[edit | edit source]Cunningham was a teacher with the Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada.[2] She went to Japan in 1887.[1] She worked with a Japanese Methodist minister and a local official, and became the first principal of the first girls' school in Shizuoka that year.[3][4] She traveled in Japan, often with other Western women teachers.[5] While in Canada on furloughs, she taught and spoke to Canadian audiences about Japan and her work,[6][7][8] with illustrations.[9] She left Japan after her third term of service, during the 1906–1907 academic year.[10]
Beginning in 1913, Cunningham was a mission teacher in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, working mainly with European immigrant women and children.[10] She was a member of the Daughters of the Empire and of the Red Cross Society.[11]
Personal life and legacy
[edit | edit source]Cunningham died in 1916, at the age of 59, in Sault Ste. Marie.[11] In Shizuoka, the alumnae of Shizuoka Eiwa Jogakko, the Methodist Church, and local officials held a memorial service in June 1916, and the school placed a portrait of Cunningham in the students' library, along with books donated in tribute.[12] At the centennial of the school in 1987, a memorial marker was placed for Cunningham on the school's grounds. The school is still operating as of 2023, as is the women's college it launched in 1966, now a university.[13]
References
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- ^ Dugal, Alexandria. "Martha Jane Cunningham: A Women's Missionary Society Pioneer" International Bulletin of Mission Research 42(1)(January 2018): 76-84.
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- ^ Shizuoka Eiwa Jogakuin Junior and Senior High School, English pamphlet.
External links
[edit | edit source]- Dugal, Alexandria. "Serving a Gender in Need: Educational Endeavors of Canadian Protestant Missionary Martha Jane Cunningham and the Shizuoka Eiwa Jo Gakko in a Changing Japan" (dissertation, Saint Mary's University 2012).
- Ion, A. Hamish. "Canadian Missionaries in Meiji Japan: The Japan Mission of the Methodist Church of Canada (1873-1889)" (Master's thesis, McGill University 1972).
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