Ms Ruby Kendrick 1883-1908

The information below is from The Star Courier newspaper of Plano, Collin County, Texas on Thursday, 13 Aug 1908.
The article was transcribed from Microfilm at the Glady Harrington Library in Plano, Collin County, Texas by Conan Massey Jr.
Ms Ruby Kendrick, daughter of John T. Kendrick and Kate Barnett Kendrick, died in Korea as a Missionary. John’s sister, Rachel White Kendrick, married Isaac Klepper of Plano, Texas before 1880. While Rachel and Isaac had no children of their own, Rachel helped raise John Kendrick’s children after John’s wife died.

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A SOLDIER OF THE CROSS

What People say about a Plano girl who laid down her life for others

HER GREAT SACRIFICE

What was said at the meeting of the Epworth League

The Houston Post of Monday gave an account of a meeting of the Epworth league at Corpus Christi the Sunday before as follows:
In memory of a Texas girl who volunteered for service under the banner of the cross and fell on the firing line last June, services were held at Epworth-by-the-sea yesterday and tributes to her life of devotion and death of sacrifice were paid to be eminent churchmen of Methodism.
A year ago, when the State Epworth League met in its annual encampment for 1907, Miss Ruby Kendrick, a young leager from Plano was there to tell her comrades of the ranks of young Methodism good-bye. She was to depart for a month for Korea. Since girlhood she had been devoted to the church in its religious services, in its prayer meetings, in its activities of mercy, and blessing and helpfulness she had found increasing joy, and with the reading of reports of the remarkable receptiveness of the Korean people, to whom Christianity had just come, there deepened within her piety the desire and the purpose to have some active part in this great warfare of the Prince of Peace, whose soldier she had pledged herself to be.
“Show me your marching orders,” said Lord Wellington to the disheartened missionary. And to the young girl in the Texas town there came this marching order, “Go ye unto all the world and preach My gospel.” And she made ready to go. They bade her good-bye at Epworth last summer, there was a great farewell service where all had the opportunity to grasp her hand and bid her God’s speed and in a few weeks she was flying across the Pacific, leaving America farther and farther below the water’s broad horizon.
Two months ago she died. Out where Christianity has planted its outpost, in the field where the struggle against the ancient gods of the ancient East is being _____ for the triumph of the W____ Christ, the Texas girl fell in the trenches, fell in the ministry to which she had pledged her young life with its fair future, and they laid her to rest in peace and quietness in that land of the Morning Calm.
The friends who bade her God’s speed a year ago met to commemorate her devotion to faith and splendid loyalty to the Great Commission yesterday, and the scene at that vase memorial service held in honor of a woman’s sacrifice has touched the great hear of Texas Methodism. at the memorial service held in her home conference, a short time ago, twelve young women volunteered to take the place of the fallen missionary, and from all parts of the State comes reports of the significant influence which the sacrifice of this young life has brought to bear upon the hearts and lives of the young people of the denomination.

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"One well-known Texas Epworth League project was the Ruby Kendrick Memorial Fund. Ruby Kendrick volunteered as a missionary to Korea in 1907 but died in less than a year, and Texas leaguers ultimately raised nearly $120,000 in her memory as a mission project." - http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/EE/ixe1.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Walter N. Vernon et al., The Methodist Excitement in Texas (Dallas: Texas United Methodist Historical Society, 1984).

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Tombstone inscription at the Seoul Foreigner's Cemetery

Ruby Rachael Kendrick
B. Jan. 28. 1883
D. Aug. 15. 1908
"If I had a thousand lives to give Korea should have them all" - Ruby Kendrick

http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~schipp/Memorials/kendrick.html