Putnam, Katharine (Deaconess). Papers

PP-00-R0143

The Archives of the Episcopal Church

Fonds

Putnam, Katharine (Deaconess). Papers

• 1917-1970 (Creation)

.6 cu.ft. (2 boxes)

Upon completing her studies at the Philadelphia Church Training and Deaconess House in 1917, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society appointed Katharine Putnam to the Shanghai District in China. She arrived on August 18, 1917 and was assigned to the Yangchow mission as a support worker. In 1920 she was set apart as a deaconess. For the next three decades, she worked throughout China where she taught English, prepared educational materials, held short-term school appointments, trained women evangelists, and served as Bishop Graves’ secretary. During this time she traveled back and forth between the US and China before her final departure from China in 1950 with the onset of the Communist regime. After forty-one years of service, Deaconess Putnam retired in 1958.

The Papers of Katharine Putnam document segments of her work as a deaconess stationed in China in the decades leading up to the Communist revolution in the late 1940s. The correspondence and diaries present limited details of Putnam’s life with the most documentation dating from World War II. Photographs comprise the bulk of the collection, most of which are related to the China Mission with approximately one fifth being cultural scenes of China. Also included are several liturgies written in Chinese as well as an album of photos and inscriptions that was created as a memento to Putnam upon her departure from China in 1950.

Correspondence 1917-1970
Diaries 1917-1950
Author's Works (KP), 1928, 1936, 1937
Memorabilia, 1937-1947
Visual Materials
Print and Pictorial Records

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• Chinese
• English

Overseas Department. China Missionary Personnel Records

• China Mission
• Chung Hua Shang Kung Hui
• St. Faith's School
• Deaconesses

• China

• Putnam, Katharine (Subject)

• Photographs