{"id":1099,"date":"2018-09-21T09:57:10","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T14:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2023-08-07T11:45:43","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T16:45:43","slug":"dr-myrtle-hinkhouse-from-china-to-the-iowa-womens-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/2018\/09\/21\/dr-myrtle-hinkhouse-from-china-to-the-iowa-womens-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Myrtle Hinkhouse: From China to the Iowa Women’s Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"horses<\/a>
Dr. Hinkhouse in Tengchoufu, China, 1917<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In 1916, a young doctor by the name of Myrtle Hinkhouse stepped onto a ship heading toward China. Years earlier, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions appointed her to serve in Tengchoufu and, after studying at the Women\u2019s Medical College in Philadelphia, she was ready to begin her work. Hinkhouse worked in China for three decades, helping patients, training nurses, and teaching at medical academies before returning to family in West Liberty, Iowa. Her great-niece, Ann, grew up listening to her stories.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"peking<\/a>
Hinkhouse with her medical staff in Peking, 1920<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I met Ann while working as the director of an ESL program at a local church. She contacted me with the hope of meeting my students from China. She thought they would like to see and even keep some of the items Myrtle brought back from her travels. I set a meeting up with her and about five students, not really thinking anything of it. I assumed, mistakenly, Ann mostly had art or jewelry, maybe a fan or two. I was astonished when she instead pulled out folders of hand-written letters, photographs, and a journal. This wasn\u2019t pieces of art. This was a history collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feeling sick, I watched the students pick out which papers to keep. I knew once the collection was separated, it would be almost worthless. \u201cAnn,\u201d I said, \u201chave you considered donating this to an archive?\u201d She told me she had asked a local historical society, but they weren\u2019t interested. She didn\u2019t think anyone else would be, either. \u201cAnn,\u201d I repeated, \u201cdid you ask the University?\u201d The University of Iowa was only a couple blocks away. That fall, I had started the School of Library and Information Science graduate program. Nestled in the same hallway as my classes sat the Iowa Women\u2019s Archives. It seemed if Myrtle\u2019s papers belonged anywhere, it was there, kept together, and accessible to everyone. The challenge was convincing Ann of that.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"westliberty<\/a>
Hinkhouse at home in West Liberty, Iowa, 1950s<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I\u2019ll spare you the details of how I begged Ann to leave the collection with me, the time spent relocating the items given away in that first meeting, or my devastation upon learning that one student went back to China with most of the photos, even after promising them to me. It was that last event that prompted me to run to IWA, clutching what I did have of the collection. I knew what I had was important; I didn\u2019t know what to do with it, and I was afraid of losing more. But it all worked out. Ann visited IWA later and agreed to donate the collection. I volunteered to process it myself, determined to learn and to see the project through. Around the time I was hired as a student worker, Ann discovered a travel trunk full of Myrtle\u2019s papers. I spent a year piecing through those items, adding the new material into what had already been organized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over one hundred years after Myrtle\u2019s departure for China, I\u2019m glad to announce the Hinkhouse collection is finally processed. The finding aid has been published<\/a> and researchers finally have access to her letters, books, and photographs. As happy as I am, though, the moment is bittersweet. Processors, I think, always feel a connection to the people whose collections they are organizing. It\u2019s hard not to, especially after delving through diaries, letters, childhood essays and recent memoirs. With Myrtle Hinkhouse, though, it was always more than that. She feels like an old friend, one I\u2019ve cared deeply about and worried over, one that brought me Ann\u2019s companionship, and one that pushed me into a new (and happy) path at the IWA during my graduate career. I can only hope she\u2019ll inspire the students and researchers who study her collection as much as she inspired me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

— Rachel Black, IWA Graduate Assistant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1916, a young doctor by the name of Myrtle Hinkhouse stepped onto a ship heading toward China. Years earlier, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions appointed her to serve in Tengchoufu and, after studying at the Women\u2019s Medical College in Philadelphia, she was ready to begin her work. Hinkhouse worked in China for threeContinue reading “Dr. Myrtle Hinkhouse: From China to the Iowa Women’s Archives”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":1102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,18,8,1],"tags":[46,45,28],"syndication":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2276,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/2276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/iwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}