![mini diary mini diary](https://assets.aspinaloflondon.com/images/square-large2x/1199090-077-2453-258700001.jpg)
The biographer Hua-ling Hu writes that, while at Ginling College, Minnie "attempted to lead the students to fulfill the spirit of Ginling's motto, 'abundant life,' by making them walk out of the 'ivory tower' to see and understand the suffering of the poor and by encouraging them to devote their lives for the betterment of the society." However, some of the college's staff members and students did not support Vautrin's method, who found her overbearing, conservative, and self-righteous. During the fall semester of 1922, Vautrin hosted a fundraiser to build an elementary school for 150 local, mostly illiterate children who lived in the homes near Ginling College's campus.
![mini diary mini diary](https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-7edce/images/stencil/600x600/products/1284/12289/2013_wannathis_flower_pattern_cover_mini_diary_scheduler_16__34207.1354234478.jpg)
She 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 Nanking. Īt Ginling College, Vautrin decided to extend her one-year agreement. However, she later broke off her engagement and never married. The college was the third institution founded by a group of American missionaries who sought to "establish four woman's colleges in China - one each in north, central, west, and south." Vautrin postponed her wedding for one year in order to become the acting president at Ginling College in 1919. While at Columbia University, Vautrin was approached by a teacher from Ginling College, and was asked to serve as president of the institution for one year. She enrolled in Columbia University in New York City to pursue a Master's degree in Education, which she received in 1919. In 1918, after serving for a period of six years in China, Minnie returned to the United States for furlough. In Hofei, Vautrin also met her future fiancé, a fellow American missionary whose name is unknown. During her time at the school the number of pupils increased and a high school department was added. Hua-ling Hu, one of Vautrin's biographers and writer of American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, writes that "by 1914, about six thousand young Americans went to foreign countries as missionaries, over one-third of them to China." Vautrin accepted the Foreign Christian Missionary Society's request to develop a girls' school in China, and when she was 26 years old, she traveled to Hofei to establish the San Ching Girls' Middle School. When 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 (1840–42) and Second Opium War (1863-65) that opened Chinese seaports to Christianity. Iris Chang, writer of The Rape of Nanking, notes that Vautrin was "Tall and Handsome in her youth, with long dark hair, she was a vivacious and popular woman who attracted numerous suitors," but who decided that instead of getting married she would become a missionary. The University pastor recommended Vautrin to the recruiters of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society, who requested that she replace a teacher in China. She graduated in 1912 as salutatorian of her class with an A.B. At the University, Vautrin was president of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. She taught mathematics at LeRoy High School, Illinois before continuing her studies at the University of Illinois. When she graduated in 1907, she was ranked first in her class of 93 students and spoke at the commencement ceremonies. Due to her financial situation, Vautrin had to delay her studies several times to work. Vautrin was accepted to Illinois State Normal University in Normal, Illinois in 1903. Photograph of Wilhelmina "Minnie" Vautrin while in college During her high school career, Vautrin worked several part-time jobs to save for her schooling and volunteered at local churches. Her teacher, commending Vautrin's work at school, later said that "Minnie was a born student.She could excel in most anything she tried, and was a genuinely Christian girl." After primary schooling, Vautrin attended Secor High School. Three years later, the courts permitted her to return home to her father, where she assumed many household chores and excelled in school. After this, Minnie was sent to several different foster homes. When Minnie was six years old, her mother died of unrecorded causes.
![mini diary mini diary](https://image.cloudcommercepro.com/external/image181163103.jpg)
Minnie was the second of the couple's three children her elder brother died as an infant.
![mini diary mini diary](https://i.etsystatic.com/26172336/r/il/c620c7/2678086094/il_fullxfull.2678086094_g7sp.jpg)
Her father Edmond, a French immigrant from Lorraine, moved to Peoria, Illinois in 1883 to undergo a blacksmithing apprenticeship with his uncle, and later moved to Secor, where he married Pauline. Wilhelmina Vautrin was born in Secor, Illinois on September 27, 1886, to Pauline (née Lohr) and Edmond Louis Vautrin.