From that little beginning in 1860, the school increased the following
year, until finally other branch schools were organized in Beirut and
Lebanon, and then in Damascus and Tyre, until now, the following
schedule, furnished to me by the officers of the Institution, will show
to what proportions the enterprise has grown. The Memoir of Mrs.
Thompson, entitled "The Daughters of Syria," gives so full a history of
these schools, that I need only refer the reader to that volume for all
the information desired. Since the lamented death of Mrs. Thompson, the
direction of the schools has been entrusted to her sister, Mrs. Mentor
Mott. The Central Training School in Beirut was under the care of Mrs.
Shrimpton, who labored with great earnestness and wisdom in that
important institution until the spring of 1873, when she resigned her
position and became connected with the work of Female education under
the American mission in Syria. She was aided by English and native
teachers. The schools in Zahleh, Damascus, Hasbeiya and Tyre are under
the care of English and Scotch ladies, who have certainly evinced the
most admirable courage and resolution in entering, in several of these
places, upon outpost duty, without European society, and isolated for
months together from persons speaking their own language. I believe that
such instances as these have demonstrated anew the fact that where woman
is to be reached, woman can go, and Christian women from Christian
lands, even if beyond the age generally fixed as the best adapted to the
easy acquisition of a foreign language, may yet do a great work in
maintaining centres of influence at the outposts, and superintending the
labors of native teachers. These young native teachers trained in
Shemlan, Sidon, Suk el Ghurb and Beirut, cannot go to distant places as
teachers, and _ought not to go_, without a home and proper protection
provided for them. Such protection _is given_ by a European or American
woman, who has the independence and the resolution to go where no
missionary family resides, and carry on the work of female education.
Even at the risk of offending the modesty of the persons concerned, I
cannot refrain from putting on record my admiration of the course of
Miss Wilson in Zahleh, Miss Gibbon in Hasbeiya, and Miss Williams in
Tyre, in making homes for themselves, and carrying on their work far
from European society and intercourse.
The British Syrian Schools are doing a good work in promoting Bible
education. Many of the native teachers, male and female, have been
trained in our Mission Seminaries, and not a few of them are members of
our evangelical churches. It has always been my aim, from the time when
Mrs. Bowen Thompson first landed in Syria to the present time, to do all
in my power to "help those women which labored with me in the gospel."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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