Person Page - 418

SEWALL, MRS. ETTA PARKER
1021 Munroe Ave.
Age 88. Passed away Jan. 18 at St. Mary's Hospital. Mrs. Sewall was born in West Moreland. New York, on May 2. 1880, and came to Racine from Minneapolis. Minn, in 1897. On May 28, 188, in Minneapolis, she was married to George M. Sewall who preceded her in death Nov. 25, 1939. She was a member of the Order of Eastern Star.
Surviving are one son, Fred A Sewall of Racine: two gran-daughter; three great grand-children. Funeral services will be held Thursday, 2 p.m., in the Wilson Funeral Home, 1139 Blaine Blvd.. Rev. Alexander Simpson officiating. Burial will be in Mound Cemetery.

A descendant of Hananiah Parker of Reading, Mass. He was a student at Amherst college, 1827-30, was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1831, M.D., 1834; and attended Yale Divinity school, 1832-34. He was appointed by the A.B.C.F.M., a missionary to China; was ordained May 16, 1834, and embarked for Canton in June, 1834. In October, 1835, he opened an ophthalmic hospital in Canton, which soon became a general hospital, and not only attended over 2,000 sick, but preached to his patients in their own language and trained several in medicine and surgery. He came back to the United States at the outbreak of the opium war between China and England in 1840. He returned to China in 1842, accompanied by his wife, who was the first foreign woman to reside in Canton. Dr. Parker continued the hospital 1842-55. He was appointed secretary and interpreter to the U.S. legation to China in 1844; and in 1845 resigned his connection With the American board to serve as chargé d'affaires in the absence of the U.S. minister. In 1853 he made a brief visit to the United States, where he was appointed U.S. commissioner to China with plenipotentiary powers for the revision of the treaty of 1844, and served as such, 1855-57. In this capacity he was again in China, 1855-57, and then settled in Washington, D.C. He was founder and for several years president of the Medical Missionary Society of China, became a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1868, a corporate member of the A.B.C. of F.M. in 1871, and in that year a delegate of the Evangelical Alliance to petition the Emperor of Russia to permit freedom of worship in the Baltic provinces. He was president of the Washington branch of the Evangelical Alliance in 1887. Yale conferred upon him the degree of A.M. in 1858. He is the author of: Journal of an Expedition from Singapore to Japan (1838); A Statement respecting Hospitals in China (1841); Eulogy on Henry Wilson (1880).