Label
SILVER Date: ca. 1900 / This silver was made by Luen Wo, one of the leading silversmiths in Shanghai in the late 19th and 20th centuries. All of the pieces in the are stamped with Luen Wo's makers mark. Wo operated from various premises in Nanking Road (Nanjing Road) in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century. His firm was prolific and also traded other items such as diamonds, jewelry, and embroideries. / This silver once belonged to one-time Los Gatos resident Lochie Rankin, the first unmarried woman missionary to China. Rankin was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on January 20, 1851 before moving to Milan, Tennessee with her parents and sister in. In 1876, at age 25, she volunteered to teach at The Indian Mission Schools in Oklahoma before joining the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the United Episcopal Methodist Church South (UEMCS) in 1878. She moved to China and was trained by the wife of a missionary at the Clopton Boarding School in Shanghai. Upon completing her training in 1879 Rankin's sister Dorie joined her in China and they moved to Nanxiang to open a girl's school. After her sister's death in 1885, Rankin moved to Huchow, China in 1909 to open a boy's school before retiring to Tennessee in 1926. She died and was buried in Nashville on September 14, 1929.
