Matilda Smyrell Calder Thurston

Matilda Smyrell Calder Thurston (1875–1958) was an American Presbyterian educator and missionary. She is known for serving as the first president of the Ginling College in Nanjing, China.

Biography Thurston née Calder was born on May 16, 1875, in Hartford, Connecticut. She attended Mount Holyoke College. After teaching high school for several years after graduation, she married John Lawrence Thurston and the couple traveled to China. They worked at the Yale Board of Foreign Missions, returning to the United States after John contracted tuberculosis. He died in 1903 or 1904.

After her husband's death Thurston went to work for the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. In 1906 she returned to China where she work for the Yale Mission at Changsha. Thurston was president until 1928, when she was succesdeed by Wu Yi-fang.

Thurston lived in the United States from 1936 through 1939, returning to China to work on World War II relief efforts. She was interned in the early 1940s by the occupying Japanese. Upon her release she lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts. She died on April 18, 1958, in Auburndale.