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| Lydia Trimble in 1913. (Des Moines Register. March 9, 1913) |
In 1904, Lydia Trimble was getting ready to leave Iowa. Again.
She’d
already spent more than a decade in China, much of it working in schools for
girls. Missionaries were scarce. Money was usually tight. Trouble occasionally
came right to the door. Now, after roughly three years back in the United
States, she was getting ready to cross the Pacific and go back to work.
The Sioux
City Journal reported that Trimble would sail from San Francisco on
August 26. Two young Chinese women who’d come to America with her were going
back too. One had studied at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, another at
Simpson College in Indianola. Lydia had spent part of her furlough studying at
Morningside College in Sioux City.
But
Lydia wasn’t going back to her old job. She planned on starting a college for
women in China.
That
was easy enough to say. Building one was another matter. Lydia didn’t have a
pile of money or a staff waiting for her in China. A college needed land,
buildings, teachers and students. Somebody had to pay for all of it.
