Missionaries
Carte de Visite Photograph of Clara A. Swain
Carte de Visite Photograph of Clara A. Swain
PHO.000279.3
Photograph
ca. 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 Clara A. Swain, MD (1834–1910), a doctor and missionary to India. In 1869, she was one of the first two missionaries sponsored by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The society began after a small group of women heard Dr. William Butler preach a missionary sermon on March 14, 1869, in Boston, Massachusetts. Swain arrived in Bareilly, India, in 1870 and eventually helped establish the Clara Swain Hospital, the first hospital for women and children in India. She spent 27 years in India helping treat and care for women and children.
Created around 1869 by Amory Nelson Hardy (1835–1911), 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] Amory Nelson Hardy was a photographer in Boston at No. 493 Washington Street in the late 1800s. The back of the photograph contains the photographer’s pictorial label. A faded inscription under the picture states the name, “Clara A. Swain.” Two different inscriptions appear on the back of the card. One inscription states, “Clara A. Swain, M.D., Bareilly, India”; the other reads, “1834–1910; 2nd Missionary, Women’s For. Miss. Soc.”
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