Anna Isabel Fox

Anna Isabel Fox (1890 – 1974), later Anna F. Smith, was an American educator and a Christian missionary in the Philippines.

Anna Isabel Fox
A young white woman's face and shoulders in an oval frame, from a 1918 publication
Anna Isabel Fox, from a 1918 publication.
Born1890
Died1974
NationalityAmerican
Other namesIsabel Fox, Anna F. Smith (after marriage in 1925)
Occupation(s)Educator, Christian missionary in the Philippines
SpouseFloyd Olin Smith

Early life

Anna Isabel Fox was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the middle daughter of Rufus P. Fox and Anna B. Fox. Her father was a builder.[1] She trained as a teacher at the University of New Mexico, graduating in 1910.[2] In 1918, she completed further training at a Bible institute in New York, in preparation for overseas mission work.[3]

Career
Six women standing in a row indoors. The first woman on the left is white, wearing a white dress. The second woman in Filipina, wearing a western-style dress; the next three women are also Filipinas, wearing "butterfly sleeve" formal dresses; the sixth woman is white, and tall, and wearing a white nurse's uniform and cap.
Anna Isabel Fox (left), Florence Fox (right, in nurse's uniform), and four Filipina students, from a 1922 publication.

Fox taught at a missionary school in San Rafael, New Mexico as a young woman. In 1918, she was appointed by the Woman's Board of Missions to work as a missionary teacher in the Philippines.[3]

Fox served in the Philippines for eight years, from 1918 to 1927, as founder and first principal of a women's Bible school and dormitory in Cagayan province.[4] "I am so glad I am here," she wrote in 1919. "It is such a beautiful place and the people are so charming and give such great promise."[5] In 1922, she wrote, "The days grow more and more busy, and the more busy they are, the happier I am."[6] Her sisters Florence Lesley Fox, a nurse, and Grace Evelyn Fox, an educator, followed her into mission work in the Philippines, in 1920 and 1923 respectively.[7] She lectured on her work in the United States during a furlough in 1924 and 1925.[8][9]

Personal life

Anna Isabel Fox married a widowed medical missionary at Cagayan, Floyd Olin Smith, in 1925.[7] The couple had children, including Annabell (born 1928) and Florence (born 1930).[10] The Smiths retired to Felton, California in 1947. Anna F. Smith was widowed when Floyd Smith died in 1961.[11] She died in 1974, aged 84 years; her grave is in Felton Cemetery, next to her husband's. Today the Fox sisters are remembered as noted figures in the history of the United Church of Christ of the Philippines in Cagayan de Oro.[12]

References
  1. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and Arizona Gazetteer and Business Directory. 1884. p. 302.
  2. Mexico, University of New (1910). Annual Catalogue of the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. New Mexico Print. Company. p. 131.
  3. "New Workers for New Fields" Life and Light for Woman (May 1918): 199.
  4. Prieto, Laura R. (2014-10-29). "Bibles, Baseball, and Butterfly Sleeves: Filipina Women and American Protestant Missions, 1900-1930". In Choi, Hyaeweol; Jolly, Margaret (eds.). Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific. ANU Press. p. 369. ISBN 978-1-925021-95-0.
  5. Fox, Anna Isabel (January 1919). "Field Correspondents". Life and Light for Woman. 49: 38.
  6. Fox, Anna Isabel (May 1922). "Field Correspondents". Life and Light for Woman. 52: 198.
  7. Prieto, Laura R. (2010-03-19). "'Stepmother America': The Woman's Board of Missions in the Philippines, 1902-1930". In Reeves-Ellington, Barbara; Sklar, Kathryn Kish; Shemo, Connie A. (eds.). Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812–1960. Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-9259-0.
  8. "Missionary to Give Talk". The Montclair Times. February 14, 1925. p. 1. Retrieved November 21, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. "Women's Board of Missions to Meet Here". Hartford Courant. November 1, 1924. p. 20. Retrieved November 21, 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "Florence E. Trozera obituary". Bobbitt Chapel. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
  11. "Dr. Floyd Smith, Retired Medical Missionary, Dies". Santa Cruz Sentinel. August 7, 1961. p. 10. Retrieved November 21, 2019 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  12. Sitoy, Valentine T. "History of United Church of Christ in the Philippines, Cagayan de Oro". Heritage Conservation Advocates. Retrieved 2019-11-22.
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