Ward, Laura D. (Laura Dwight), 1887-1972

Laura Dwight Ward was born on April 12, 1887 in Newton Center, Massachusetts. Her father was Langdon Storer Ward, a Congregational missionary to Turkey, and her mother was Laura Bliss Ward, daughter of Edwin E. Bliss, also a missionary to Turkey. She was the youngest of seven children. She graduated from Amherst, Massachusetts, High School in 1904 and attended Mount Holyoke College from 1904-1908, where she received a B.A. with a major in mathematics. She also studied at Boston University Extension (1912), Hyannis Summer Normal School (1914), Columbia University Teacher's College (1921-1922), Yale Divinity School (1937-1938) and the Yale Institute of Far Eastern Languages (1945-1946). She taught school in Springfield, Massachusetts (1908-1910) and Medford, Massachusetts (1910-1914), and taught English to foreigners at a night school (October 1910-February 1911, also in Medford, Massachusetts). She spent most of remainder of her life as a missionary teacher in Foochow, China (1914-1950), where she was principal of a girls' school and a teacher of English and music. She also coordinated women's work in churches, focusing on training Chinese women. While in China she experienced revolution and civil war (1927-1932), the Japanese occupation (1941-1943), postwar political unrest, renewed civil war and the rise in Communist rule (1946-1950). She retired to the United States in 1951 and served briefly as a missionary in the Allston-Brighton area of Boston. She wrote one book entitled "Here and There Stories: How Precious Pearl Became a Teacher" (Boston, 1922). She died in Acton, Massachusetts on April 23, 1972 at the age of eighty-five.