4PAR@ ` dTEXT ` VHaygood, Laura Askew1845╨1900educator and missionaryBorn on October 14, 1845, in Watkinsville, Georgia, Laura Haygood grew up from 1852 in Atlanta, where her mother opened a girls╒ school and both her parents were active in the Methodist church. She graduated from Wesleyan Female College (now Wesleyan College) in Macon, Georgia, in 1864. She taught in a girls╒ school in Oxford, Georgia, for a year and then returned to Atlanta, from which her family had fled before General Sherman╒s approach, and opened a girls╒ school of her own. She closed the school in 1872 and became a teacher at the new Atlanta Girls╒ High School, of which she became principal in 1877. She held that post for seven years, and during that time she also taught teacher-training courses and was an active Sunday school leader. Long interested in Chinese missions, Haygood responded in June 1884 to a call by the Woman╒s Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a woman of administrative experience to take charge of missionary work in Shanghai. She arrived in Shanghai in November and set about her new duties, including learning Chinese. A highly energetic woman whose large frame made a striking impression, her frequent illnesses notwithstanding, she was an indefatigable administrator. In addition to supervising several schools, including the Clopton School, at which she taught teacher-training courses, she conducted Bible classes, did evangelistic work, and otherwise made Shanghai a beehive of Methodist missionary activity. In 1885 Haygood began soliciting funds in the church to build a girls╒ high school in Shanghai to match the boys╒ school operated by British missionaries and a home and training school for new missionaries, who could thus spend up to two years becoming culturally acclimatized to China. Work on the two institutions began in 1889, and in March 1892 the McTyeire Home and School was officially opened. From 1889 Laura Haygood was Shanghai agent of the Woman╒s Board, and on her return to China after a furlough in 1894╨1896 she was made director of all the China mission work of the board. She fell ill in 1899 and died in Shanghai on April 29, 1900. The McTyeire Home and School had by then grown in enrollment from nine to nearly a hundred, and it remained an important institution until closed by the Communist regime in 1949. «styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 8 !I , 5¬ - !I 5¬ !I link `
