Hattie

Drawn from archival material, this biography sheds light on an individual and a important time in women’s history.
This biography of Harriet Phinney (1861-1938) is the story of one woman’s search for a role more meaningful than the domestic life prescribed for her by her family and the society of her day.

Growing up in Rochester, New York, Hattie tired of her “do-nothing life” and in 1884, with the aid of Dr. Henry Morehouse, became a teacher at the newly established Spelman Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. The following year, she received appointment as a Baptist missionary to Burma, arriving in Rangoon at the age of twenty-four. Eventually joining with Ruth Whitaker Ranney, Hattie found her life’s work as an educator of native women and founder of the Burman Woman’s Bible School.

In excerpts from letters to her family over fifty-six years, Hattie’s own words vividly portray the challenges and rewards of missionary life in Burma during the historic years of the British Raj.