Biography
Mary Fletcher Benton was born on December 27, 1832, in Belchertown, Massachusetts, to a family of comfortable means. She grew up in New England, in a devout Congregational home, and she was educated at local schools. She was an able and energetic young woman, with an interest in the work of the church. In 1853, she married William Scranton, a young man of good family who was preparing for a career in medicine. They moved to Ohio and then to New Haven, Connecticut, where they began a family. They were active in the Methodist church. Her husband graduated from the Yale School of Medicine and began to practice as a physician. They had a son, William, who also became a physician.
She was a woman who took an active interest in the missionary cause. In the 1880s, as her children were growing up, she and her husband felt a call to the mission field. Her son, William Scranton Jr., was the first to go. He went to Korea, in 1885, as a medical missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mary was by then a widow, as her husband had died in 1873. She was fifty-two years old. She decided to accompany her son. She was appointed as a missionary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, and she sailed in 1885. She was the first missionary of the Methodist Women's Society to Korea.
She arrived in Seoul in June 1885, soon after the first Methodist and Presbyterian missionaries had come to Korea. The country was closed to the gospel, and the missionaries were not permitted to preach. They could only engage in medicine and education. She saw that the women of Korea were in great need. At that time, girls were not educated and had no role in public life. They were confined to the home. She decided to open a school for girls. In 1886, she began a school in her own home, with a single student, the daughter of a lower-ranking official. The girl was a concubine who had been abandoned and was in need. The girl was soon followed by a second, and the school began to grow.
In 1887, Queen Min, the wife of King Gojong, heard about the school and visited. She was pleased by what she saw and gave the school a name, Ewha Haktang, which means pear blossom academy. She also gave a tablet with the name, which was a sign of royal favor. It was a major step. The school grew steadily over the years. It taught reading, writing, arithmetic, sewing and the Bible. It was the first school for girls in Korea. It was a revolutionary idea in a society in which women were considered inferior.
She was a woman of faith and resolve. She was devoted to her students and took an interest in their lives. She took in orphans and the destitute. She helped to start other schools and a hospital for women. She also encouraged the work of Bible women, who visited homes to teach women. She often faced the opposition of the conservative leaders, who did not want to educate women. She also had to deal with the lack of funds and the political turmoil in Korea. She stood firm.
She died on October 8, 1909, in Seoul, at the age of seventy-six. She had given twenty-four years to Korea. Ewha, the school that she founded, became Ewha Womans University, one of the largest women's universities in the world. Her life shows what a woman in her fifties can do who is willing to begin again. A widow who followed her son to a closed country started a school that opened the door for the women of a nation.