Cora E. Simpson

Cora Simpson was born near Oberlin, Kansas, the daughter of George Mathew Simpson and Rhoda Rosina Simpson.[1] She trained as a nurse at the Nebraska Deaconess Hospital in Omaha,[2] with further training in Chicago, and courses in public health nursing at Simmons College in Boston.[3]

Her youngest sister, Mabel Ellen Simpson, followed her into nursing and missionary work in Asia. Mabel Simpson spent thirteen years as a Methodist nurse in India before she married in 1939.[4]

Simpson joined the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,[5] and was a missionary in China from 1907 until 1944.[6] She founded and ran the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing in Fuzhou.[7] and was superintendent at the Magaw Memorial Hospital and Nurses' Home.[8][9] "When I came to China I was told that China did not need and was not ready for nurses," she wrote in 1913. "After a day in the hospital and a few visits out into the homes, I decided there were few things that China did need as much as nurses."[10] In 1911, 1917-1918 and 1926-1927, she spent time on furlough, speaking about her work at churches and to other community groups.[11][12][13][14]

Simpson was a co-founder[3][15][16] and, later, general secretary of the Nurses' Association of China (N. A. C.).[17][18] She represented the association at international nursing conferences in Finland in 1925[19] and in France in 1933. She wrote about her early experiences in China in a memoir, A Joy Ride Through China for the N. A. C. (1926).[20] In 1947, she was named N. A. C.'s general secretary emeritus, in honor of her lifetime of service.[6]

Simpson returned to the United States in 1945, and settled in Michigan.[21] She lectured about her time in China in her later years,[22] and died in 1960, in Chelsea, Michigan, aged 80 years. She is remembered by nursing historians as "a key contributor to modern nursing in China".[9]

• Cora E. Simpson at Find a Grave