Katherine Luella Henderson

The home created by the Woman's Baptist Missionary Society of FBCN at 1136 Centre St. hosted many students of missionaries serving in foreign countries. The Newton High School yearbook for 1914 listed eight students at the address. Three more were featured in the 1916 yearbook. After the yearbook stopped listing addresses, it became difficult to determine the graduates who lived at 1136. Meet one of the graduates:

Katherine Luella Henderson was born in Myanmar in 1895, graduated from Newton High School in 1914, and Mt. Holyoke in 1918. Her father was Albert Hayley Henderson, Baptist missionary and British MD who established the first leper asylum in Myanmar. Katherine married Dr. Barnard Read in Newton Centre in 1918. Katherine, Barnard and family lived in China while Barnard worked at The Peking Union Medical College as a scientist from 1909 to 1949. He was imprisoned during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, 1941-1945. His scientific papers and the correspondence between Katherine and Barnard Read are collected in the Yale University Archives. Katherine wrote Bamboo Hospital: The Story of a Missionary Family in Burma in 1961. Katherine died in Lakewood NJ in 1979.

Special thanks to Michelle Lane in Newton for identifying the students living at 1136 Centre St and posting their yearbook profiles.