- DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Margaret Negodaeff, “HOWARD, LEONORA ANNETTA (King),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/howard_leonora_annetta_15E.html
- DCB profile notes:
- Teacher and medical missionary; b. 17 March 1851 near Farmersville (Athens), Upper Canada, daughter of Peter Gilton Howard, a farmer, and Dorothy E. Carter; granddaughter of Dr Peter Howard; m. 21 Aug. 1884 Alexander King in Tientsin (Tianjin, People’s Republic of China); d. 30 June 1925 in Peitaiho (Beidaihe, People’s Republic of China).
- Educated in Soperton, near the family farm in Leeds County, Leonora Howard attended teachers’ college in Syracuse, N.Y., and spent some years teaching in eastern Ontario, but she really wanted to be a physician. Because the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Kingston would not accept women for training, she applied to the medical school of the University of Michigan, which admitted her in 1872. She graduated with honours and an md in 1876. The previous year she had applied to and been adopted by the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the American Methodist Episcopal Church. Perhaps she had been influenced by Adelaide Galliland, a member of Leonora’s Methodist church in Soperton and the first Canadian woman to live in China, as the wife of an American missionary, Virgil Hart.
- In August 1879 she was summoned to Tientsin by Li Hung-chang, the viceroy of Chihli province, to attend his wife, then recovering from serious illness. Leonora was subsequently invited to remain – an extraordinary recognition of a westerner – and was given a portion of the memorial temple to statesman Tseng Kuo-fan in which to practise. Because of Lady Li’s influence, the doors (and presumably the wallets) of many wealthy and aristocratic Chinese were opened to her.
- In 1881 Leonora opened, in Tientsin, the WFMS-sponsored Isabella Fisher Hospital for Women and Children, named for an American benefactor. As a result of Leonora’s efforts, the medical work of the WFMS’s North China mission became centred in Tientsin rather than Peking. Leonora regretted that her group’s evangelistic work did not keep pace with their medical work, though in reality she put less emphasis on conversion and fundamentalism than others did. In 1884 she married a widowed Scottish minister who had come to China in 1880, Alexander King of the London Missionary Society. Female missionaries who married were obliged to join their husband’s organizations, but although Leonora had to resign from the WFMS, she was never officially attached to the LMS. She now worked almost exclusively for the Chinese, who called her Dr Ke Ye-da (Chinese for King). In 1885 she opened the Government Hospital for Women and Children, again sponsored by Lady Li.
- In 1908 she opened China’s first Government Medical School for Women in Tientsin, to teach Chinese women to become doctors and nurses. In 1915 a new Isabella Fisher Hospital was launched by the WFMS and a room was named in honour of Leonora King. Though she and her husband officially retired in 1917, they continued their “service of healing and love.” Sometime during this period they adopted Agnes Clarke, the daughter of British missionaries who had died during a disturbance.
- Second Great Granddaughter of Proven Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=3996
- Find a GRAVE: Cannot locate
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