Minnie M. Argetsinger

Argetsinger was born in Mansfield, Pennsylvania,[1] the daughter of James M. Argetsinger and Ruby Soper Argetsinger.[2] Both of her parents were born in Pennsylvania. Her brother George Argetsinger was a New York State senator.[3]

Argetsinger trained as a teacher at Mansfield State Normal School, graduating in 1901.[4][5] She pursued further training at New York University and Columbia University.[6][7]

Argetsinger was a teacher in Mansfield, Tioga County, and Yonkers as a young woman.[5] She was commissioned by the Woman's American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in 1919, and sent to Chengdu, Sichuan province.[8][9] She trained teachers in China at the Union Normal School, and ministered to children, elderly women, and refugees.[6] She provided a reading room in her home for local visitors.[10]

Argetsinger was in the United States on furlough in 1928, and again from 1935 to 1937.[11][12] In 1939, she wrote from Chengdu about the aftermath of Japanese bombardment: "I picked up a hot piece of shrapnel off the lawn, the other day," she wrote to her brother, noting that the metal was American-made scrap iron.[13]

In 1948 she wrote with optimism about the place of women in the new China: "Dawn has already passed in the expansion of women's work. The work for women at the present time has no limitations and is full of possibilities."[10] By 1949, when Western missionaries were no longer allowed in China, she was reassigned to Capiz province in the Philippines for her last two years of mission work.[1][14] She retired in 1951. Into her last years, she spoke across the United States, to church groups and other organizations, about her work.[15][16]

Argetsinger and her friend Mary E. Gifford lived together in Yonkers;[5] they also owned a camp together called "Giffarget" in the Adirondacks, beginning in 1916.[17] Argetsinger died in 1954, while in Boston to attend a church gathering.[5] There is a small collection of her correspondence in the American Baptist Historical Society archives.[18]