Gertrude Jenness Rinden
Gertrude Jenness Rinden was an American missionary, educator, and writer.
Early life
Gertrude M. Jenness was born in Rochester, New Hampshire, the daughter of Daniel Fremont Jenness and Ida May Wiggin Jenness. She was a birthright Quaker, a member of the Gonic Meeting. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1923.Career
Rinden taught at a Quaker school in Maine after college. She served as a missionary at Diongloh and Fuzhou from 1926 to 1937, with her husband, under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1927 she and her husband fled temporarily to Taiwan during increased violence. She worked mainly with women and children. She and the Rindens' three small children were called back to the United States in 1937, in response to increasing danger from war. In 1938, her husband fled Fuzhou shortly before his house was bombed by Japanese forces. He was in the United States during World War II. While she was in the United States she spoke about China to community groups. They returned to China after World War II, then were evacuated again in 1949; she taught for a year in Kobe, Japan, after that.Back in the United States, Rinden was a school teacher and elementary school principal at Friends Seminary in New York, and wrote books for young readers. Books by Rinden include The Watch-Goat Boy, The Bible Goes Round the World, Sidewalk Kids, Kenji, and Ten Open Doors. She also wrote teaching materials, including Junior Teacher's Guide on the Changing City, and contributed a chapter, "We Want to Stay Here for Christmas", to an edited collection called Christmas Around the World. Her story "Dragon Boat" was serialized in Jack and Jill in 1957.