Jerome Teelucksingh

INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day will be celebrated on Saturday. And there is a need to remember the many caring and patriotic women. In the Presbyterian Church, women played a crucial role in uplifting females in our country’s education system.

From 1876 to 1901, the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS), based in Canada, sent 14 female teachers to Trinidad to assist in primary schools. By the early 20th century, the local branch of the WFMS was being referred to as the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS).

The WFMS gave financial assistance, in the form of scholarships, to the WMS for the training of Trinidadian women in Christian education. Mabel Brandow, whose service to Trinidad spanned from 1946 to 1975, fondly recalled the WMS as a vibrant arm of the Presbyterian Church.

It was the local WMS which approved and encouraged the training of local Indian women leaders known as “Bible women” who worked assiduously in rural communities and led in prayer, fellowship and outreach.

As a result of the overwhelming response from women who were eager to serve as Bible women, training classes were organised in Couva, San Fernando and St Augustine. They usually served on a part-time basis and were the first female workers of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad.

The creation of social institutions and programmes of outreach demonstrated that these missionaries were philanthropists and genuinely interested in the welfare of the citizens.

In 1890, Sarah Morton (wife of Rev John Morton) founded a Girls’ Home in Tunapuna in which young women were taught English, Hindi, hygiene, religious knowledge, sewing, cooking and household management.

Interestingly, Modestina Samlalsingh, the first Indian organist in the Presbyterian Church, was taught music by Sarah Morton.

In 1889 Adella Archibald established the Iere Home in Princes Town and in 1905 she was appointed as the first superintendent of the Iere Home. Other areas were not neglected and another "home for girls" was founded at Couva in 1895.

By 1905 Archibald, through these institutions, initiated the teaching of girls in Christian work, domestic duties and English. Vashti Guyadeen noted that it soon became evident that “...these homes were used as devices for spreading Christianity, Western ideologies and cultures, and more specifically, the Victorian housewife ideology.”

From the pages of her diary, Archibald vividly reflected on the home’s service to society, “Iere Home...drawing its pupils chiefly from the country districts, though some were from the towns, was overfull without much chance of enlargement.”

This initiative would later influence the Presbyterian Church and by the 1960s it was a member of the Christian Home and Family Council, which had affiliations with 14 churches and organisations.

Undoubtedly, the activities at Iere led to the founding of women’s groups, an increased attendance of females in schools and churches, and the improvement of the girls’ role in home life.

Archibald meticulously laid the groundwork for th