Grace
Elizabeth McConnaughey was born in Washington, Iowa, on October 1, 1882. She
received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1909. She then
went to Shanxi Province, China, in 1910 as a Congregational missionary. She
remained there 18 years, many of them as principal of a women's school in
Fenzhou. From 1929 to 1932 she lived in Boston where she worked as Candidate
Secretary for the American Board for Foreign Missions. Her job was to find
college trained women to serve in stations about the world. This position
ended when the depression reduced the number of missionaries who could be
supported by the Board. From 1933-1941 she was house director of various dormitories
on the Oberlin College campus. After being forced to relinquish her position
due to illness, she lived in Claremont, California; and for seven years, as
she wrote, "lived in a suitcase and earned my keep by any means, not immoral!"
In 1947 Miss McConnaughey moved into Pilgrim Place in Claremont, an retirement
home for Protestant missionaries and ministers, where from 1967 she was a
resident of the nursing home. She died on 30 June 1978 at the age of 96.
For more information,
see: Oberlin
College Archives
Copyright Oberlin
College Archives. Photographs cannot be reproduced for publication without
the permission of the Oberlin College Archives.
