Administrative/Biographical History
Edith Evelyn Husted was born of Daniel Stone Husted, a dentist, and Julia Elizabeth Hurlburt Husted in Oberlin in 1892. Several of her extended family members pursued vocations in missionary work, and while her parents were unable to realize their dream of serving in a foreign field, they encouraged Edith to do so. As with all Oberlinians at the turn of the 20th century, the massacre of Oberlin missionaries during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900 greatly influenced Edith’s family.
Edith Husted’s mother’s brother, Charles Hurlburt, was a missionary with the Africa Inland Mission starting in 1888. Her father’s brother’s daughter Clara married Jesse Wolfe, and together they moved to China in 1909. Jesse Wolfe pursued architectural work there; later the Wolfes joined the Oberlin missionaries in Shansi, where they served until the outbreak of World War II.
Husted graduated from Oberlin College with majors in German and Latin in 1915, and Phi Beta Kappa honors. She wanted to go to Japan, but needed teaching experience and income to pay college debt. She accepted a missionary assignment at Ward Academy in South Dakota from 1915 to 1916. Surgery for a medical condition kept her at home in Oberlin for part of 1916 and 1917. She was appointed by the American Board of Christian Missions to a teaching position at Kobe Women’s Evangelistic School, and sailed for Japan in the summer of 1917. Missionaries in Japan were ordered home in 1940, and Husted was assigned to Kodiakanal School for Missionary Children in South India, where she taught until 1945.
Husted returned to the United States at the end of World War II. She lived with her brother Howard’s family from 1946 to 1954 in Youngsville, Pennsylvania to help care for her mother. Just after the war she sent boxes of clothes to her many friends in war-torn Japan. After her mother died in 1954, Husted accepted a teaching position at Shinonomi Girls’ High School at Matsuyama, located on the island of Shikoku in Japan.
Upon retirement in 1960, Husted returned to the United States with Margaret Hammaker, graduate of the Oberlin Kindergarten Primary Training School and Columbia University, and a fellow missionary from her time in India. They settled in Oberlin before moving to Claremont, California in 1966, where they lived until Margaret died in 1982. Husted died there in 1988.
Sources Consulted
Edith E. Husted Papers, RG 30/434.
Oberlin College student file for Edith E. Husted, Oberlin College Archives, RG 28.
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationLetters by Edith E. Husted dating from 1931-38 were received from Husted in 1983, along with material from Margaret G. Hammaker in accession number 1983/026. These were previously filed in RG 21, Oberlin File. Additional material (photocopies) was received from the United Church Board for World Ministries at the request of Archives staff, also in 1983. In 2012 Jeanne Wandersleben donated the bulk of the collection in the form of copies of letters, reports, printed matter, and a biographical compilation by the donor accessioned in 2014 (2014/059). Additional materials were transferred from Husted’s Oberlin College student file.
Letters dating from 1925-47 by Margaret G. Hammaker (enr. 1918-20), a friend of Edith E. Husted, are located in RG 21 Oberlin File, II. Letters, A. Oberlin Students.
“Our China,” by Clara Husted Wolfe, relating to the missionary experience of Jesse Wolfe, AB 1905, and Clara Husted Wolfe, AB 1906 located in RG 21 Oberlin File, VI. Writings, by Oberlinians, B. Unpublished Writings, 2. Articles and Essays.
For additional Husted letters addressed to Gertrude Jacobs, and for two letters dated 1915-16 addressed to William Frederick Bohn, Assistant to the President at Oberlin College, see the Oberlin College student file for Edith E. Husted, RG 28.
