Melinda Rankin (1811-1888)

      Melinda Rankin was born in Littleton, New Hampshire on March 21, 1811. She attended and taught school in New Hampshire until 1840, when she became a Protestant missionary and embarked on a series of travels through the Southern United States, Rio Grande region, and Mexico that would change many lives forever.

     In 1840, Melinda responded to a call for teachers in the Mississippi Valley, where there was a large population of European immigrants and soldiers who had returned from the Mexican-American War.  She traveled first to Kentucky, where she established several schools.  Following this, she moved on to Alabama and Mississippi where she established a few more schools and worked to educate the poor and undereducated.  She remained here until 1847. 

     In 1847, she left Vicksburg, Mississippi by her self via a small river steamer bound for Texas.  While traveling, she became acquainted with a man who was bound for Huntsville, Texas to become a teacher.  The man offered Rankin the position on the condition that she would help him care for his young niece, who was traveling with him.  Ranking agreed and they continued on to Natchitoches, Louisiana where they continued overland by horse carriage to Huntsville.   She remained in Huntsville until about 1852 when she had learned from a Presbyterian minister that the area around Roma, Texas, on the Rio Grande, was a favorable area for the spread of Protestantism. 

     In the spring on 1852, Rankin left Huntsville bound for Brownsville, Texas.  She traveled via Jefferson, Texas to New Orleans and then made passage via a steamer across the Gulf of Mexico to Brazos Santiago, crossing the Laguna Madre to Point Isabel, then by stage coach across land to Brownsville.  Ideally, she wanted to go to Mexico, but the Mexican Constitution at the time did not guarantee religious freedom outside of Catholicism, and Melinda was a Presbyterian. However, Brownsville was right across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico, which was as close to Mexico as she could get.  She settled for the time being to serve the Spanish-speaking population of Brownsville and bided her time until she could cross into Mexico to spread Protestantism.

     Among the population of less than one thousand people were several girls whose education was interrupted by their family’s move west. There was no hotel in town, so Melinda moved in with a German woman until she found a two-room building, in which one room became the school and the other became her home. As soon as the school opened, five girls immediately enrolled. In this school, she found that she was able to work with Spanish-speaking students while remaining under the protection of the United States government, which she liked. Before long, her school had expanded to enroll thirty or forty students. In addition to teaching the traditional academic subjects of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, Rankin also taught the Bible on a regular basis.  On top of her teaching, she also actively distributed Bibles and religious literature to Spanish speaking residents of Brownsville, and even managed to send some of these things across the river to Mexico.

     During her first few months in Brownsville, the unrest along the Mexican-American border was the cause of some concern for Rankin.  However, what really troubled Melinda was the fact that General Carvajal, an unsuccessful Mexican revolutionary who fled Matamoros, had taken up residence across the street from her home. Carvajal was friendly to Melinda and volunteered his men to guard her home, seeing as she was a single woman living alone.  But she lived in constant fear that if Carvajal was attacked, her house would be also, and it would probably be destroyed in the process.

     In winter 1852, however, her successful mission work was interrupted when a group of French Catholic missionaries arrived in Brownsville with plans to build a large convent. Knowing that her meager facilities would not be able to compete, she closed her school and returned to New Orleans to raise more money. On the way, the small schooner she was traveling on was caught up in a violent storm for 4-5 days, and when she arrived in New Orleans she discovered that the ship was reported lost at sea.

     Unfortunately, she collected little money during the month she spent in New Orleans, so she continued north along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, to make her way back to the East Coast where there were better prospects for soliciting money for her cause. On March 4, 1853, she arrived in Philadelphia, where the Presbyterian Board of Education granted her $500 for the project. While on the East Coast, she also collected $500 in Boston.  She then continued to collect money on the way back as well. Although the cities of Cincinnati and Louisville were largely non-responsive, she found Natchez, Mississippi to be financially generous, and by the time she reached Texas in April 1854, she had collected $2,500.

     On May 3 of that year, she bought a lot in Brownsville, Texas to be used for the Rio Grande Female Institute, which was associated with the Presbyterian Church of the United States. The building contract was signed immediately, and the building was completed in the fall of 1854. One of the compelling features of the new school was that it offered an English course, which Spanish-speaking parents of the area recognized as essential now that Texas was a part of the United States. In 1855, Melinda’s sister Harriet Rankin Kimball joined her in Texas and served as an assistant teacher in the school. Unfortunately, a severe yellow fever epidemic struck Brownsville in summer 1858, and on September 17, 1858, Harriet died after a two-day illness. Melinda herself became ill in 1859, but was nursed back to health by the grandmother of a former pupil.

     In the 1850s, the Rio Grande area was a meeting place of cultures, and political turmoil plagued the border regions. September 28, 1859 saw the beginning of the Cortina Wars when Mexican outlaw Juan Cortina took over Brownsville and held the city hostage. Cortina and his associates barricaded themselves inside Fort Brown and terrorized the district. The violence eventually forced Melinda to close the school and take refuge in Matamoros. On April 22, 1858 a resolution passed at a meeting of the Presbytery of West Texas provided that Melinda’s school be transferred to the Presbytery of West Texas to fulfill the desire of the original subscribers. In 1861, she returned to the north, leaving her niece in charge of the school. When she returned 15 months later, she discovered that Confederate pressure had forced her niece to close the school.

     However, the loss of her school coincided with a new Mexican Constitution passed by the Juarez Party in 1857 that no longer specified an official Mexican religion (religious tolerance was officially guaranteed in December 1860). This meant that Melinda was now free to fulfill her dream of working in Mexico. Protestant Bibles were now in high demand in Mexico, and so Melinda gave them her entire supply.

     In 1862, Melinda opened a school in Matamoros, Mexico for 25 pupils. But the trade boom resulting from the U.S. Civil War created a great demand for houses in Matamoros, so after 6 months, the owner of the building Melinda was renting demanded it back, and it was impossible for her to secure another one.

     In March 1863, she returned to New Orleans yet again. However, a storm made it impossible to board the steamer that would carry them there, so Melinda and her two nieces were forced to spend several days in the Texas port of Bagdad. Bagdad was sympathetic to the Confederacy, which meant that as Yankees, the Rankins were not treated well. Since they were not allowed to rent a hotel room, they spent several days crouched in the hold of a small schooner named “The Honduras,” which was anchored near the shore until the US Bark “Arthur” arrived to protect their ship. They arrived safely in New Orleans on March 27, and Melinda served there as a nurse for Union soldiers until the fall of 1863 when she became the head of a school for recently freed African-Americans.

     But in November 1863, Melinda received news that the Union troops had captured Brownsville and were returning her school there to her possession. Unfortunately, the Confederates returned in early 1864 and reclaimed the area.  At that point, Melinda abandoned the school for good and returned to teaching former slaves at the Freedman’s School in New Orleans.

     In March of 1865, officially made the move to Mexico.  She planned a journey from Matamoros to Monterey, but the French, under Napoleon III, had invaded Mexico in 1862 in an attempt to establish an Empire, propping up Maximilian Hapsburg as the new Emperor of Mexico. Northern Mexico was then divided into three zones of control: Matamoros belonged to France, Juarez controlled Monterey, and Cortina controlled the area in between. During the invasion, Melinda waited in Matamoros for 10 days in the hope that the situation would calm down.  However, she grew impatient enough to make the 270 mile, four day stagecoach trip to Monterey.

     Fortunately, when she arrived in Monterey, she found the state capital of 40,000 people to be receptive to her mission, though the local Catholic authorities often resisted the spread of Protestantism and constantly came up with pretexts to evict her from her buildings about once a month. But in late summer 1865, the French Imperialists captured Monterey, shortly before Melinda planned to travel to New York for fundraising purposes. Because Melinda saw the French as intruders upon Mexican sovereignty, she refused to ride in the French stagecoach.  She ended up riding in an unescorted coach through Cortina territory instead. Despite the fact that she left all of her valuables behind, the coach was captured by Cortina-supporting bandits, who took her party to their camp. Here, she cooked food and cared for the medical needs of Cortina’s men until Cortina released them. After being delayed in Brownsville for four weeks by a yellow fever quarantine, Melinda reached New York City on October 1, 1865.

     Back in New York, the American Foreign-Christian Union announced that they were unable to continue to finance the Monterey mission. However, Melinda, in her personal solicitations, managed to earn $14,000, including $10,000 from E.D.Goodrich of Boston alone.

     She returned to Mexico in May 1866 and with the help of a U.S. businessman, purchased a building for the new mission in Monterey.  While the building was being remodeled to suit her needs, Rankin began to recruit people to go out into the community and distribute Bibles and other religious material.  Melinda then proceeded with her work, which included directing workers, holding public Sunday worship, supervising at least two meetings per week, and conducting school for Mexican girls. Fortunately, she was assisted by native leaders who visited rural homes and farms. Before long, Monterey became known as the headquarters of Protestantism in northern Mexico.

     However, on December 7, 1869, on the eve of the “Purissima” celebration (intended to honor the Virgin Mary); a statue of the Virgin was knocked off of a bridge and shattered. Although the vandals were never known, Melinda’s mission was blamed (though there was no reason to suspect them other than the fact that they were Protestants). After boys started throwing rocks through the window and scribbling “Death To Protestants” on nearby signs, the U.S. Consulate promised to protect the Rankin mission, but the guard they sent fell asleep at his post. After that, native converts guarded the mission instead.

     Soon after this incident, political revolts broke out yet again in Monterey territory after October 12, 1871, when Benito Juarez was selected president by the Mexican Congress following an excruciatingly close election. Local mission workers had to hide to keep from being forced into the army. At one point, Melinda herself had to donate $64 of her own money to the army in order to keep them from confiscating her mission property. In May of 1872, the juaristas (government troops) captured Monterey. Melinda’s niece was sent to safety while Melinda remained behind to protect the mission, even after her male assistant was required to flee by climbing the high back wall. When the juaristas finally came, Melinda had only food and water, which she passed through the bars of the mission windows to the hungry juaristas. This kept her safe until they began to plunder General Trevino’s home across the street, which allowed Melinda to run to safety at a friend’s home nearby. That evening, government officers arrived in Monterey and restored the peace, and a more permanent peace returned with the death of Juarez on July 18, 1872.

     In September 1872, Melinda Rankin reluctantly decided to retire on account of the debilitating summer heat, frequent illnesses, overwork, political turmoil, and lack of funding from New York. John C. Rayburn quoted her as saying that “I had entertained the hope that I might continue to labor and die in the field…indeed, it had been the long cherished desire of my heart that I might make my last resting place with the Mexican people, and with them rise in the morning of resurrection, as a testimony that I had desired their salvation.” At first, the board in New York refused to allow her to sever her connections with Mexico and demanded that she remain there, but eventually she managed to relinquish control of it to the American Board of Congregational Church, who then transferred it five years later to the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A.

     In 1875, Melinda moved to Bloomington, Illinois, after living in Haverhill, Scioto County, Ohio for several years. She chose Bloomington because her nieces Emma Dick, Ellen and Luella Kimball, who were the children of her sister Harriet, lived there. In Bloomington, she owned a home on Douglas Street.  She also owned an 80-acre farm outside of Kappa, Illinois, which was occupied by her nephew W. Kimball. She also took an important role in raising her sister Harriet’s children, after Harriet’s death in 1858.

     Towards the end of her life, she wrote a book about her missionary work in Mexico.  The book was entitled “Twenty Years Among the Mexicans:  A Narrative of Missionary Labor,” which was published in 1881.       

     Melinda Rankin died on December 6, 1888 at the home of her niece, Emma Dick. She was buried in Evergreen Memorial Cemetery, where her gravestone inscription reads “Pioneer Protestant Missionary in Mexico—a Remarkable example of Faith, Courage, and Consecration. She rests in peace. Her works do follow her.”