Blough Family Collection, 1907-1945 | Earl H. and Anita F. Hess Archives and Special Collections

Series 1. Anna Blough Journals, Essays, and Sermons

Series 2. Reports of the Mission Family Commission and Miscellaneous Reports

Series 3. Correspondence

Series 4. Death of Anna Blough

Series 5. Pictures and Postcards

Anna Viola Blough, born November 22, 1885 in Black Hawk County, Iowa to a large Brethren family, spent many of her years as a missionary in China. In 1889, Anna was baptized into the Church of the Brethren, and she attended the Mt. Morris Academy and Bethany Bible School. Anna made the conscious decision to not marry or have a family. Instead, in 1913, she sailed for China with a group of missionaries and Brother Early of the Mission Board. She worked in Pingting (Pingding) in the Shanxi Province of China until 1918 when she returned home. In 1920, she returned to China, and while she was there she supervised the distribution of grain during a famine and recruited workers for a Red Cross road building project. While she was in China, she focused on helping Chinese women; in addition to famine relief, she also worked with young girls in primary school and women in rural villages. In May 1922, she contracted typhus, and eventually died from it in Pingting (Pingding), China on May 9, 1922. She was buried in Pingting (Pingding), China, though there is a grave marker for her in Orange Township Cemetery in Iowa.

The Blough family was an old Brethren family that lived in Waterloo, Iowa. Anna’s mother, Mary Susan Miller Blough, and her father, Uriah S. Blough, had seven children, three girls, Jennie, Anna, and Ida Belle, and four boys, Warren, Elmer, Reverend John, and Robert. Most of the family is buried in the Orange Township Cemetery in Waterloo, Iowa.