Ida Pruitt

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Ida Pruitt (1888 – 1985) was the daughter of North China Southern Baptist missionaries Anna Seward Pruitt and C.W. Pruitt. After attending Cox College in College Park, Georgia (1906-1909), Ida Pruitt received a B.S. from Columbia University Teachers' College in New York (1910). When her brother John died, Ida returned to China to be with her family and became a teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for Girls in Chefoo (1912-1918). In 1918, she came back to the United States and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia until hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York as head of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) where she remained until 1938. While living in Beijing Ida adopted two girls, one Chinese, Kueiching [Kwei-ching], the other a Russian refugee, Tania Manooiloff. They were educated in English schools in China, then sent to the United States. Kueiching married Tommy Ho, a radiologist from Canada , in 1940; they settled in Saskatchewan, Canada , and had two children: Timmy and Nancy. Her other daughter, Tania Manooiloff , taught Russian at Swarthmore College . She married Cornelius "Cornie" Cosman , a meteorologist who worked for the US Department of Commerce and served on the Indusco Technical Committee; they had two children: Katia and Hugh. After Cosman's death, she married Mr. Wahl.

During the Japanese occupation of China (1937-1945), Ida assisted Rewi Alley as he organized the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (Gung Ho, industrial worker's cooperative). The CIC was formed to organize cooperative factories throughout the countryside to support China's industry. Schools were built to train the Chinese (often crippled or orphaned) to work in and manage the factories. Indusco, the fundraising arm of the CIC in the United States, was formed, and IP served as its executive secretary from 1939 to 1951. In 1946 Ida rented an apartment with Maud Russell on West 93rd Street in New York City and remained there until 1951 when she retired and moved to Philadelphia near the University of Pennsylvania where she remained for the rest of her life.

A keen observer and student of Chinese history, society, and paleo-anthropology, Ida was a prolific writer and the author of a number of books, stories, and articles, including several autobiographies (A China Childhood (1978), The Years Between , and Days in Old Peking: May 1921-October 1938) and several biographies (Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (1945, 1967), Old Madame Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life, 1926-1938 (1979), and Tales of Old China). She also translated and edited many works, including Yellow Storm by Lao She (1951), The Flight of an Empress by Wu Yung (1936), Little Bride by Wang Yung, and Beyond China's City Walls by George A. Hogg, et al. In addition to her writing, Ida filled her retirement years with travel, talks, and political activism. She returned to China twice (1959, 1972) despite a State Department ban and remained a strong proponent for U.S.-China relations throughout her life. Ida died on July 24, 1985, in Philadelphia.

Mostly taken from the taken from the Radcliff Finding Aid. See link below.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Marjorie King, China's American Daughter (Shatin, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2006). ISBN 9629962217.

[edit] External links

Persondata
NAME Pruitt, Ida
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION missionary in China
DATE OF BIRTH 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH China
DATE OF DEATH July 24, 1985
PLACE OF DEATH Philadelphia, Pennsylvania