Celebrating the Bible in Women's History
Carte de Visite Photograph of Isabella Thoburn
Carte de Visite Photograph of Isabella Thoburn
PHO.000279.2
Photograph
1869
United States
N/A
Photographic print on cardboard
4.1 × 2.5 × 0.2 in. (10.4 × 6.3 × 0.5 cm)
Not on View
This photograph is of Isabella Thoburn (1840–1901), a missionary to North India. In 1869, Isabella was one of the first two missionaries sponsored by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Isabella traveled and eventually established a high school and woman’s college in India. The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society began after a small group of women heard Dr. William Butler preach a missionary sermon on March 14, 1869, in Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout the society’s existence, they sent women missionaries to Africa, South America, and various other countries, including India, China, Japan, Korea, Italy, Mexico, Bulgaria, and the Philippines.
Created in 1869 by William Shaw Warren, Boston, Massachusetts.[1] Acquired by 2010 by Gene Albert (Christian Heritage Museum), Hagerstown, Maryland; Privately purchased in 2010 by Green Collection, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Donated in 2017 to National Christian Foundation (later The Signatry), under the curatorial care of Museum of the Bible, Washington, DC.
Notes: [1] W. [William] Shaw Warren was a photographer in Boston at 41 Winter Street in the 1870s and was prolific during the Carte de Visite era. The back of the photograph contains the photographer’s pictorial label. An inscription under the picture states, “Isabella Thoburn, Lucknow.” Two different inscriptions appear on the back of the card. One inscription states, “Isabella Thoburn, Lucknow, India 1869”; the other reads, “1836–1922; 1st Missionary, Women’s For. Miss. Soc.”
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