Elizabeth Howard was born in Minneapolis USA in 1912 and grew up as a daughter of missionaries. Her father was a professor in the geology department of the University of Minnesota. When she was five the family moved to China where her father lectured at Canton Christian College for 10 years.
The family returned to the USA where Elizabeth finished her schooling and in 1933 went on to take a history degree at Wheaton College before studying at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Thinking of missionary work, Elizabeth met missionary Florence Raetz, herself a graduate of Wheaton College, who told her of the work with girls at the Door of Hope Mission in Canton, China. These girls were victims rescued from the practice of mui tsai. Elizabeth was interested enough to accompany the Raetz family when they returned to Canton in 1936, despite having no official mission support.
In Canton she spent most of her first year learning the Chinese language and then increasingly assisted in the care and supervision of the girls and in teaching them handicrafts, like embroidery, sewing and weaving.
When the Mission moved from Canton to Hong Kong* in 1937, Elizabeth went as well. She served with Door of Hope from 1936-41.
She returned to the USA on furlough in 1941, but because of the war she never went back to China. She later married and spent the rest of her life in Chicago USA.
*First year on 'an island' (Cheung Chau?) then a large house in Taipo up to the war.
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Miss Elizabeth Howard assists Fanling Babies' Home
In 1939 when Mildred Dibden was looking for a suitable property in Hong Kong/NT for her Babies' Home, it was Miss Howard who found the mansion on the Sha Tau Kok Road in Fanling and thought it would be suitable for her. She arranged a meeting with the owner and wrote to Mildred on Cheung Chau inviting her to meet the owner and view the house.
On the day in question the two women met at the YMCA building in Salisbury Road and took the Canton train from the red brick Kowloon railway station.
Long negotiations in traditional Chinese style took the best part of the afternoon, and the owner thought he was providing finest western type hospitality by offering coffee to drink in breakfast sized bowls. Alas the mixture was made with cheap and stale powdered milk and 'some obscure type of coffee substitute' and the women painfully endured drinking it while observing the niceties of guest behaviour.
At last however the deal (and the ordeal) was done, and the women went their separate ways, Elizabeth to Taipo and Mildred back to Cheung Chau. The rest was history. Early in 1940 Some 49 infants under the age of 3 were transported from Cheung Chau, and the Fanling Babies' Home was inaugurated.
Source: The Yip Family of Amah Rock by Jill Doggett