Bruce, Edith Eva (Langworthy) (1867–1920)

Edith Bruce served in India as a nurse, educator, and Bible worker, where she faithfully carried out her mission until her passing.

Background

Edith was born April 6, 1867, in Traverse City, Michigan.¹ This diminutive (4 foot, 11 inches) powerhouse with brown eyes married physician Walter Johnson Bruce (1850-1902) on November 28, 1892, in Alden, Michigan. After his tragic death from tuberculosis in 1902, she became acquainted with Seventh-day Adventism, possibly through the Battle Creek Sanitarium where she is listed in a 1903 city directory as working as a nurse.² The first reference to her name in denominational periodicals appears in 1903 when joined the “Jubilee Army” to help sell Christ’s Object Lessons to provide debt relief for Adventist schools.³ In 1906, she was part of the “Committee on Medical Work” for the West Michigan Conference.⁴ She received a “missionary license” where she was based in Hancock, Michigan.⁵ She then served for a time as head nurse of the Washington Branch Sanitarium in Washington, D.C.⁶

Travels and Service

On June 18, 1908, she left New York City to travel to India,⁷ stopping in England and France along the way. From France she took the “Arabia,” leaving from Marseilles, where her baggage had not arrived, to travel across the Mediterranean, to Bombay [Mumbai]. When she arrived, George Enoch (1876-1944) and Bertha Enoch (1837-1966) took her to their home at Satara about 200 miles north. She then she proceeded 1,200 miles to Mussoorie, where she arrived to serve as the matron of the Mussoorie Sanitarium located at some 7,000 feet elevation. At that time, the sanitarium was in a twelve-room house, including the front porch that had been made into a reception room. She wrote:

Two of the nurses room in the bath-room, and I am located in a little sheet-iron house ten by twelve feet, at present having no windows or doors, and only a rough floor loosely laid. I am in hopes that some day I may have windows and a door put in.⁸

All of the water they used had to be hand carried and food cooked in an old-fashioned brick fireplace. She wrote home, pleading for more medical appliances to conduct treatments. Although the sanitarium “is small and very plain,” they had enough patronage for it to be self-supporting. She also noted that she had begun to study the Urdu language.⁹ During her first term of mission service, she alternated between work at the sanitarium in the mountains with alternating periods where she served as a Bible worker and medical relief work in Calcutta.¹⁰

At the 1910 biennial meeting of the India Union Mission, it was voted to establish a school at the Annfield Rest Home. On March 15, 1911¹¹, she founded the new Adventist school in the Himalaya Mountains that would be taught using the English language. It was “started for the children of our missionaries and English-speaking believers in India.”¹² The Annfield School, as it was dubbed, had an opening attendance of eleven with scant supplies. It would be the forerunner of the Vincent Hill School that later (1920) was purchased nearby to accommodate the growing institution.¹³ When the second school year began in March 1912, the attendance had doubled. There were classes in cooking, sewing, and practical nursing. In addition, musical offerings included lessons in piano, violin, and voice, and the school was made a “centre for the Trinity College Examinations” in Music, with singing classes and several piano and violin students. Most of the classes were taught on the verandahs of the home.¹⁴ The new school was considered to have “inestimable benefit to our missionaries” because it enabled “them to keep their children with them in India.” In a more healthful climate, high in the mountains, missionary parents could feel better that their children were safe without having to have them either cross the ocean or send them far away to obtain an education.¹⁵

In 1916, she returned with Lenna Salisbury (1873-1923), whose husband (Homer Russell Salisbury [1870-1915]) tragically died when his ship sank, so the two women returned together on furlough back to America.¹⁶ For the rest of World War I, she served at Washington Missionary College.¹⁷ The Sligonian college newspaper noted that she was preceptress of South Hall and had charge of the laundry.¹⁸

Edith was a delegate¹⁹ at the 1918 General Conference session, during which she was asked to return to India to serve in the English Bible work.²⁰ She left Seattle, Washington, on June 6, 1918, traveling across the Pacific Ocean since the war would not be over for another five months (November 11, 1918).²¹ Despite the war, there were urgent calls for missionaries as church leaders recognized the dire need to send to support the work of the church as it became safe to do so by using a westward route.²²

Her Passing and Legacy

Tragically, Edith died from peritonitis at the Evelyn Hall Nursing Home in Mussoorie, North India, on October 12, 1920, at the age of 53.²³ Her colleagues described “her loss” to the “English work in Bombay” as “a severe one.”²⁴ As she realized her death was near, she conveyed an impassioned appeal for others to come to come and serve in India. “Who Will Take My Place?” she implored.²⁵ Church leaders believed it was very fitting that Edith Bruce was buried in Mussoorie on October 13, 1920, the same day that the foundation stone was laid for the new Vincent Hill School carrying on her legacy in learning.²⁶ Historian David J. B. Trim notes that her obituary describes how her colleagues viewed her:

We laid her to rest on the quiet slope of the lower ranges of the mighty Himalayas, until those ancient mountains shall catch the gleam of the bright morning when Jesus shall come to redeem from the grave the saints whose death is so precious in His sight, and whose last resting place He marks so tenderly.²⁷

Her legacy was continued through the many lives she impacted. One example was at the Marathi girls’ school at Lucknow, where Sister Ghaus worked and had earlier accepted the Adventist message through the efforts of Edith Bruce.²⁸

Sources

Andross, Matilda Erickson. Story of the Advent Message: Prepared for the Young People’s Missionary Volunteer Dept. of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Washington: Review and Herald, 1926.

Bruce, Edith. “Annfield School,” The Eastern Tidings, April 1911.

Bruce, Edith E. “Annfield School,” The Eastern Tidings, January 1912.

Bruce, Mrs. E. E. “Annfield School, Mussoorie,” Eastern Tidings, January 1913.

Bruce, Edith. “From Washington, D.C., to Mussoorie, India,” Life and Health, June 1909.

Bruce, Mrs. E. E. “An Ideal Missionary Meeting,” Eastern Tidings, June 1, 1920.

Bruce, Edith E. “The Medical Work Reaches All Classes,” Missions Quarterly, Second Quarter, 1918.

Bruce, Edith E. “Only a Girl,” The Youth Instructor, August 3, 1915, 11-12; ARH, May 28, 1914.

Bruce, Edith E. “Widowhood in India,” ARH, March 2, 1911.

Fletcher, W. W. “Death of Sister Edith Bruce,” Eastern Tidings, November 1, 1920; ARH, January 20, 1921.

Greenleaf, Floyd. In Passion for the World: A History of Seventh-day Adventist Education. Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2005.

Hubley, R. A. “‘Who Will Take My Place?’” Eastern Tidings, November 15, 1920.

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook, various years. https://www.adventistyearbook.org/.

Spalding, Arthur W. Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists. 4 vols. Washington: Review and Herald, 1961-1962.

Trim, D. J. B. A Living Sacrifice: Unsung Heroes of Adventist Missions. Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 2019.

Notes

1. For genealogical details, see: https://www.ancestry.com/invite-ui/accept?token=xwiv799HSVSiEvgGd-OvTpiRld-zDBu5GPXFXgGMF8M=.↩

2. R. O. Polk, Polk’s Battle Creek City Directory 1903-1904 (Detroit, MI: R. L. Polk & Co., [1903]), 144.↩

3. “News and Notes,” The West Michigan Herald, January 28, 1903, 4.↩

4. “Second Meeting of the Fourth Annual Conference of the West Michigan Conference,” The West Michigan Herald, February 7, 1906, 1.↩

5. Yearbook of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination: The Official Directories for 1906 (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, [1907]), 37.↩

6. “ Mission Notes,” North Michigan News, August 4, 1908, 3.↩

7. See note ARH, June 25, 1908, 24.↩

8. Edith Bruce, “From Washington, D.C., to Mussoorie, India,” Life and Health, June 1909, 366.↩

9. Ibid., 368.↩

10. See note about her death, ARH, October 28, 1920, 16.↩

11. Edith Bruce, “Annfield School,” The Eastern Tidings, April 1911, 7.↩

12. See excerpt from letter by J. L. Shaw under “Our Schools in Other Lands,” ARH, May 18, 1911, 18.↩

13. Edward W. Pohlman, “‘First the Blade, Then the Ear’ Department of Education,” Eastern Tidings, September 15, 1945, Supplement, 1.↩

14. Mrs. E. E. Bruce, “Annfield School, Mussoorie,” Eastern Tidings, January 1913, 18.↩

15. [H. R. Salisbury], “Our Schools in India and Burma (concluded),” ARH, May 15, 1913, 19.↩

16. “Notes” Asiatic Division Mission News, July 1, 1916, 6.↩

17. See note ARH, June 13, 1918, 24. 1918 Yearbook of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1918), 204.↩

18. See under “College News Notes,” The Sligonian, September-October 1916, 23.↩

19. “Eighty Meeting: April 4, 10:30 A.M.,” ARH, April 25, 1918, 13.↩

20. “Fifteenth Meeting, 3:00 p.m., April 9, 1918,” General Conference Bulletin, April 11, 1918, 149. Her call appears first in the General Conference Executive Committee Minutes, July 27, 1917, 627, https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Minutes/GCC/GCC1917.pdf#search=%22Edith%20Bruce%22.↩

21. J. L. Shaw, “To the Fields in 1918,” ARH, January 16, 1919, 11.↩

22. See note in  The Youth Instructor, May 28, 1918, 7-8.↩

23. See “Report of the Death of an American Abroad, Bombay India, Mrs. Edith E. Bruce, December 3, 1921,” National Archives at College Park, College Park, Maryland; NAI Number 302021; Record Group: General Records of the Department of State; Record Group 59; Publication A1 205; Box number 4137, 556.↩

24. I. F. Bruce, Eastern Tidings, March 15, 1922, 4.↩

25. R. A. Hubley, “‘Who Will Take My Place?’” ARH, January 20, 1921, 26; Eastern Tidings, November 15, 1920, 6.↩

26. L. G. Mookerjee, “A Comprehensive Survey of the Early Work,” Eastern Tidings, May 8, 1941, 9.↩

27. Cited by D. J. B. Trim, A Living Sacrifice: Unsung Heroes of Adventist Missions (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2019), 82.↩

28. R. E. Loasby, “The Marathi Field,” ARH, December 15, 1921, 10-11.↩