Annie Ryder Gracey
Annie Ryder Gracey (, Ryder; pen name, Mrs. J. T. Gracey; November 4, 1836 - February 17, 1908) was an American author and missionary of the long nineteenth century. She wrote two books based on her travels, Eminent Missionary Women and Woman's Medical Work in Mission Fields. The history of the literature produced by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church was closely linked with Gracey, who served as chairman of the committee on literature, and created missionary literature for the Society. Early life and education Annie Ryder was born in Christiana, Delaware, November 4, 1836. She attended the Wilmington Female College, from which she graduated at the age of sixteen. Career Missionary For four years, she taught in her alma mater school. On March 10, 1858, at the age of 22, she married Rev. John Talbot Gracey. In 1861 they were appointed to India and stationed at Sitapur. There, Gracey gathered a few local girls together "forming the nucleus of the great work now carried on by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society." On the veranda of their native house, Mrs. Gracey began the first girls' school in Sitapur. Eventually they added to this compound the Sitapur