Loretta C. Van Hook

Loretta C. Van Hook (July 4, 1852 – October 12, 1935) was an American missionary and educator in Persia. Characterized as a quiet, sad-faced, delicate woman, Van Hook attended Rockford College of Rockford, Illinois when she was a widow, having lost her husband and only child in 1872. She began then to prepare for mission work and went to Tabriz, Persia, under the Presbyterian Board of Missions. She established there a boarding school for girls, modeled after Rockford. Van Hook did much evangelistic work in Persia and lectured extensively in the U.S. on return trips. She made five journeys to the U.S. from Persia, and on each trip visited different places of interest in Europe.

Early life and education Loretta C. Turner was born in Shopiere, Wisconsin, July 4, 1852. in 1870, and they moved to western Iowa. Her husband and her only child, Arthur Perry Van Hook,

Hailing from the Presbyterian Church of Marshalltown, Iowa, Van Hook sailed for Persia on September 9, 1876, along with Rev. Samuel L. Ward and his wife. They reached Tabriz in November of that year. During that and the two succeeding years, she spent her time in missionary work and in the acquisition of the language of the country, having in view the delivery of Persian women from the degradation in which they lived. She went out under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Missions. She settled in Tabriz, a city of 200,000 people, where women were taught to believe that they had no souls, and where no woman had ever been taught to read. After learning the language of the people, in 1879, Van Hook established a school for girls, modelled after Rockford College, She resigned from the foreign mission board in 1917.

Death Loretta C. Van Hook died October 12, 1935, in Newburgh, Indiana; burial was in that town's Rose Hill cemetery.

Selected works "Image Worship during Muharram" (1891) "Memories of Pioneer Days" (1913)