Luella Miner

Sarah Luella Miner (October 30, 1861 – December 2, 1935) was an American educator and a Christian missionary in China from 1887 until her death in 1935. She founded and led the North China Union College for Women, China's first women's college.

Early life Miner was born in Oberlin, Ohio, the daughter of Daniel Irenaeus Miner and Lydia Jane Cooley Miner. Her father was a missionary and teacher; after the American Civil War he taught freedmen at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, and Miner trained as a teacher there. She completed a bachelor's degree at Oberlin College in 1884. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Oberlin College in 1914.

Career

Teaching After a stint at Fisk University, Miner became a teaching missionary in China, commissioned by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in 1887. She studied Chinese, including literary Chinese, at Paotingfu. From 1888 to 1902, she taught at Luho School for Boys and the North China Union College in Tungchow. She helped fund their education with the sale of a book, Two Heroes of Cathay, which also included her plea against the Chinese Exclusion Act: "We have made the laws. If they are working injustice, it is ours to change them." While in the United States in 1901, she also spoke at the meeting of the Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior, held at Oberlin. In 1907, Miner chaired the Women's Committee at the China Centenary Missionary Conference in Shanghai.

In 1903, she moved to Peking and was principal of the Bridgman Academy, a girls' school, for a decade. She founded the North China Union College for Women in 1905, China's first college for women, and served as the college's dean until 1922. At Shantung Christian University, she was dean of women and taught theology, from 1922 to 1932. She also published a school history, Evolution of a woman's college in China: North China Union Woman's College, Peking (1914); Christian Education of Chinese Women (Chicago, n.d.)

Death and legacy Miner died from pneumonia at Jinan, China, in 1935, aged 74 years. Her former student H. H. Kung paid for her funeral "as a traditional mark of respect". There is a residence hall at Yenching University Women's College named for Miner. Miner's papers can be found in the ABCFM papers at Harvard's Houghton Library. There is also a small collection of her papers at the University of Washington Libraries.