Ironically, no obituary appeared in the
Sabbath Recorder
for Ella Grace Brown Burdick (1870-1960). She was ninety
years old and seemingly forgotten. The clue to learning
something personal about this woman, and about her
husband as a person, had appeared in a tribute to her
husband soon after his death in 1933. It was submitted to
the
Recorder
from China by Dr. Rosa Palmborg, who
served in the Seventh Day Baptist mission there for forty-
six years from 1894 to 1940. After quoting from a long
tribute to Dr. Burdick published in the
American Journal
of Clinical Medicine
, Dr. Palmborg said, “I have known
him and his dear wife since the time when she and I were
in district school together, when his kindly, and perhaps I
should say saintly, father was my pastor.”
3
The district school Ella Burdick and Rosa Palmborg had
attended together was in West Hallock, Illinois (near
Peoria). Rosa’s family had emigrated there from Sweden
in 1873 when Rosa was six years old. Ella’s parents,
Rosaline and Harvey S. Brown, from Berlin, New York,
had moved there in 1858, eight years after the West
Hallock (Southampton) Seventh Day Baptist church was
organized. Rev. Stephen Burdick, long active in denomi-
national life in Central New York, became the pastor in
West Hallock sometime in the 1880s during which time
Rosa Palmborg became “convinced of the Sabbath and
joined the church there.”
4
The pastor’s son Alfred
received degrees from Alfred University (1886 at age 19)
and Rush Medical College in Chicago (two years later).
Ella’s was a Normal School education preparing her to
teach in Illinois. They were married in West Hallock in
1891 and he began practice in nearby Dunlap. Following
a time in Florida because of Ella’s health, they returned
to Chicago where they moved their membership to the
Chicago SDB Church
5
and he began practice in Hinsdale
and teaching at Illinois Medical College. Meanwhile, Rosa
Palmborg obtained her medical education in New York
City, immediately sailed to China, and began a fifty-year
correspondence with Ella reporting on her work in the
SDB mission. Upon Rosa’s forced return from China during
World War II, Ella arranged for publication of Rosa’s
China Letters in 1943.
6
Although Ella’s side of the corre-
spondence is not included, Rosa’s replies document the
Burdicks’ genuine interest and support in many forms
from sending her medical journals and medicine for the
hospital to gifts for her personal needs and money to
support her work with individual Chinese families. They
provided the money to build the church in Liu-ho with
rooms behind for Rosa’s industrial school where she
taught Chinese women to read and to support themselves
and the mission through skilled sewing projects, arrang-
ing for their sale in China and the USA. Ella, along with
other American friends, took orders and distributed the
goods. The Liu-ho church was dedicated in 1928 as the
Stephen Burdick Memorial Chapel in tribute to Dr. Burdick’s
father, Rosa’s former pastor.
7
The Burdicks assisted in edu-
cating several Chinese as well as many American students
SR • January 2016
17
Photo 1
(top opposite page): Ella Grace Brown, 1870.
Photo 2
(bottom opposite page): Mrs. Alfred S. Burdick,
2nd from left, 1940.
Credit: Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.
Photo 3
(top of this page): Alfred Stephen Burdick, MD
Credit: William Haynes Portrait Collection, Chemical HeritageFoundation
Archives, Philadelphia, PA
continued on next page...
Identifying
Dr. Alfred Stephen Burdick
did not prove to be difficult.
Tracking down
his wife was the challenge.
