This week in Christian history: Samuel Johnson dies, Isabella Thoburn arrives in India and Pope Innocent III elected
Isabella Thoburn arrives in India — Jan. 7, 1870
This week marks the anniversary of when Isabella Thoburn, an American Methodist missionary known for her educational work in India, arrived in Bombay.
A native of St. Clairsville, Ohio, whose parents were from Ireland, Thoburn followed her brother into mission work in India, where she helped found and oversee a girls’ school.
“Assigned to the city of Lucknow, where her brother was also based, Thoburn began a program of education for Indian women that would lead eventually to the creation of the first Christian college for women in Asia,” explained the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions.
“She began with six girls in one room in the bazaar in April 1870. This developed into a boarding school, then a high school, and in 1886, the college began, which she named Lucknow Woman’s College.”
After her death in 1901, the college she launched was renamed Isabella Thoburn College in her honor, and later became the official women’s college of Lucknow University.
