The Belle Hawkes Papers 50 years later
Revisiting a collection of personal papers that was first processed in November 1975
50 years ago this month, Record Group 116, the Belle Hawkes Papers, was processed.
November 1975 saw Belle’s story made more widely available and accessible. She’s a staple figure at the Presbyterian Historical Society— just mentioning her name conjures up an image of a woman perched straight-spined atop her horse. RG116 has been fully digitized, too, as part of In Her Own Right: Women Asserting Their Civil Rights, 1820-1920, a pilot-project executed by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PASCL), with funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH). You can access the digital collection in Pearl.
In celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the processing of this collection, we have pulled a handful of images and items from Belle’s personal papers in order to highlight her history, her talents, and her legacy.
Belle was born Sarah Belknap Sherwood, on December 13, 1854, in Ballston, New York. After graduating from Elmira College, Belle served as a teacher at Goraly Seminary in Newburgh, New York, from 1879 to 1882. The following year, her missionary journey began.
Appointed to the East Persia Mission in 1883, Belle was stationed in Hamadan, where she met and married fellow missionary James W. Hawkes. The two were wed in October 1884. Their marriage marked the beginning of a joint missionary endeavor that lasted for almost four decades.
James Hawkes was born in Indiana in 1853. He attended Wabash College for two years before transferring to Princeton, where he finished courses and earned his undergraduate degree. From there he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City before beginning his missionary career in Persia in the early 1880s.
For 36 years, Belle and James dedicated themselves to the Persian communities surrounding their mission station. Belle focused particularly on the well-being of the Armenian, Jewish, and Muslim women and girls living there — she brought with her a passion for teaching, which was put to use at a school for girls in Hamadan. Beyond her educational work, Belle opened her home to travelers, local women and their children, and other missionaries; during World War I, she and James offered their home up to refugees seeking shelter. She and her husband also participated in itinerant work, traveling across the countryside for visits during feast times. The two loved to travel, and enjoyed documenting their trips, as is evidenced by the beautifully framed photograph of them on the coast of Maine during a trip to the Northeast in 1910.
The following is taken from Frederick J. Heuser's article "Women's Work for Women" in the 1987 publication of 'American Presbyterians,' and offers a glimpse into the Hawkes' work in Persia: “The center for educational work for women in Hamadan was the Faith Hubbard School. Shortly after her first year ended in Hamadan, Belle was assigned to teach a class of forty-nine Armenian children …. Besides her regular classes, Belle organized and taught a number of Sunday school classes."
Sunday school classes led to prayer meetings, at which Belle would often take the chance to preach. A woman preaching the gospel, regardless of whether she stands at a pulpit, was still rather taboo in the late 19th century. After studying Belle's correspondence to her family, Heuser comments that "She saw nothing unusual in this activity and viewed it as the essence of missionary work. Her literal interpretation of the biblical command, 'Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature' transcended any gender-based restriction as to whose responsibility it was to preach ... besides expressing an obvious liking for preaching, she viewed it as complementary to her husband’s work and questioned that if she was not permitted to preach, ‘what [then] should the minister’s wife be about?’”
Along with writing sermons, speaking the good word, and teaching the local women, Belle also spent time painting, sketching, and being outdoors. Included amongst her papers are a selection of artworks that she made and shared with others. It seems that most of them were created to be sent in the post to her mother, Margaret P. Sherwood.
Until she died on the mission field of typhus during the British occupation in 1919, Belle Hawkes was the heart of the Hamadan mission. After the loss of his wife, James stayed on at the mission, continuing his service for another thirteen years before passing in April of 1932. During that time James shouldered a rather intimidating undertaking — the writing of the Persian Bible Dictionary and the revising of the Persian language Bible. He also founded the American School for Boys, a feat that would have made his late wife proud.
Belle kept a diary — many of them, each detailing a certain year, starting in 1880 and stretching through the decades until her death. Along with these daybooks, the collection consists of pages upon pages of correspondence penned to her family back in the United States, as well as several beautifully done photographs that range from portraits of Belle herself to light-hearted shots of her pet cats and horses. (She also had a pet donkey!) Her collection at PHS serves as a portal to 20th century Persia, through the distinct lens of women's mission work; the 50 years that have passed since her papers were first processed serves as a reminder of the breadth and depth of PHS's archives. You never know what you might find, or who you might meet, down in the annex.
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