27 Facts About Minnie Vautrin

Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin was an American missionary, diarist, educator and president of Ginling College.

Wilhelmina Minnie Vautrin was born in Secor, Clayton County, Illinois, on September 27,1886, to Pauline and Edmond Louis Minnie Vautrin.

Minnie Vautrin arrived in Clayton County, Illinois, in 1883 to undergo a blacksmithing apprenticeship with his uncle in Peoria, and later moved to nearby Secor, where he married Pauline.

Minnie Vautrin was the second of the couple's three children; her elder brother died as an infant.

When Minnie Vautrin was six years old, her mother died of unrecorded causes.

Minnie Vautrin could excel in most anything she tried, and was a genuinely Christian girl.

Minnie Vautrin was accepted to Illinois State Normal University in Normal, Illinois, in 1903.

Minnie Vautrin nonetheless graduated in 1907, ranked first in her class of 93 students and delivered a speech at the commencement.

Minnie Vautrin taught mathematics at LeRoy High School, Illinois, before continuing her studies at the University of Illinois.

At that university, Minnie Vautrin was president of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions.

When Minnie Vautrin received this request in 1912, Christian missions to China, facilitated by groups such as the Foreign Christian Missionary Society, had begun to flourish as a result of the treaties ending the First Opium War and Second Opium War that opened Chinese seaports to Christianity.

In Hefei, Minnie Vautrin met her future fiance, a fellow American missionary whose name is unknown.

In 1918, after serving for a period of six years in China, Minnie Vautrin returned to the United States for furlough.

Minnie Vautrin enrolled in Columbia University in New York City to pursue a Master's degree in Education, which she received in 1919.

At Ginling College, Minnie Vautrin decided to extend her one-year agreement.

Minnie Vautrin created courses on education administration and management, an innovative student-teaching program, and handled the planning and funding of the new campus by the West Gate of Nanjing.

In 1926, after Minnie Vautrin returned from a brief visit to her family in America, the Chinese Nationalist government's Northern Expedition troops under General Chiang Kai-shek captured Nanjing.

Ginling College was not harmed during the looting, and Minnie Vautrin hid in the college's attic with a few others while Chiang Kai-shek's troops were on Ginling's campus.

However, Minnie Vautrin remained at Ginling College, and served as its president until the Nationalist government mandated that all colleges in China have native-born presidents.

Minnie Vautrin was replaced by a Ginling graduate, Dr Wu Yi-fang, in September 1928.

In 1931, Minnie Vautrin returned to the United States on furlough and in order to care for her aging father.

Minnie Vautrin made arrangements to prepare the campus by sending records to Shanghai, purchased supplies, instructed students and faculty on emergency precautions, cleaned out and converting rooms in campus buildings for storage and refuge, and ordered the building of trenches.

Minnie Vautrin saw to the burial of the dead and the reception of newborn babies and was successful in tracing missing husbands and sons.

Minnie Vautrin was awarded the Order of Brilliant Jade on July 30,1938, by the Chinese government for her sacrifices during the Nanjing Massacre.

Minnie Vautrin is depicted in Lu Chuan's 2009 film City of Life and Death.

In Nanjing Requiem, a 2011 novel by Chinese-born writer and Boston University professor Ha Jin, Ha writes from the perspective of a fictionalized assistant to Minnie Vautrin named Anling Gao.

Minnie Vautrin's diaries provided inspiration for the novella 13 Flowers of Nanjing written by Geling Yan, which was the basis for the 2011 film The Flowers of War, directed by Zhang Yimou.