Annie Stocking Boyce


Annie Stocking Boyce was an Presbyterianism in [the United States|American Presbyterian] missionary teacher active in Tehran, from 1906 until 1949. She also launched and edited a Persian-language women's journal, Alam-e-Nesvan ''''.

Early life

Annie Woodman Stocking was born in Wiscasset, Maine, and raised in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Redfield Stocking and Isabella Coffin Baker Stocking. Her parents and paternal grandparents were missionaries in Persia and Turkey; her father, born in Persia, was also a Union Army veteran of the American Civil War. She earned a bachelor's degree at Wellesley College in 1902.

Career

Boyce was a teaching missionary in Iran from 1906 until 1949, appointed by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. She spoke Persian, and worked at the Iran Bethel School, a girls' school in Tehran; Jane Doolittle was among Boyce's colleagues there. From 1918, she was president of the school's alumnae association. She was also founding editor of Alam-e-Nesvan , a Persian-language women's magazine that carried practical advice, alumnae news, and translations from American literature. She was also active in Anjoman-e ḥorrīyat-e zanān, a feminist organization of the late Qajar period.
She also worked at Alborz College in Tehran, teaching courses and supervising housing; her husband,
Arthur Clifton Boyce, was a professor and dean at Alborz, and was the college's acting president in 1929.
Boyce wrote about her work in letters to her family and for American publications, including "Moslem Women in the Capital of Persia", and in a book, Kings, Queens and Veiled Ladies. She spoke about Iran to church congregations and women's groups during her furloughs in the United States.

Personal life

Annie Stocking married fellow American missionary educator Arthur Clifton Boyce in 1914. That year they attended an annual missions meeting in Chicago together. In 1915, returning to Tehran during World War I, they traveled by sea and rail from New York through Norway, Finland and Russia. She was widowed in 1959, and she died in 1973, aged 93, in Pasadena, California. Her gravesite is in Illinois.