Shortsville N.Y.
April 7" 1921Dear Miss Palmer,
After I graduated I taught school for three or four years. Then I was needed at home until 1893. Meantime my mother died and my father re-married and I was at liberty to accept the urgent request of a missionary in China, whom I knew well and esteemed highly, to make a home for him: I went to China with a band of missionaries who were returning. Mr. Sprague met me at Tientsin, and we were married the day after I landed, and went immediately to his station at Kalgan 125 miles north west of Peking. There we remained till 1900 when the Boxer uprising broke out and we were obliged to flee. We were cut off from Peking and had to go by caravan through Mongolia, then Siberia, Russia, Germany to Flushing, where we crossed over to London and then took a steamer for New York. We left our home in Kalgan, the 12" of June and reached our home here in Shortsville about the first of October. We were sixty-one days going from Kalgan to Kiachta, the capital of Siberia, with our caravan. There were twenty-three in our Party including six children and seventeen adults. We returned to China in the summer of 1902, and remained till 1910. When our Kalgan work was transferred to another mission, "The Methodist Protestant." My husband died February ninth, 1919.
I inclose my photograph taken the year we graduated; also two snapshots taken in China at our home in Kalgan [the photographs are no longer with the letter]: in the small one Mr. Sprague and I are at the right; in the big one he is fourth from the left, top row and I am second from the left of the third row; the gentleman with long beard next to my husband is Rev. Mark Williams, who died at sea last Aug. as he was returning to China with his daughter and her family. He was associated with my husband for many years. The second lady in the second row also belong to Kalgan; we four were all that belonged to the Kalgan station. Nearly all the others were our summer guests, missionaries from different localities who preferred the mountains to the sea. for their summer outings.
I have a full set of pictures of those who graduated in 1871, and will be glad to lend any that may be missing.
I do not recall any anecdotes of my student days; did have one tin-type but disposed of it long ago. I shall expect the pictures to be returned.
Yours Cordially
Viette Isabel Brown Sprague.Class of '71.