Mary Louise Eldridge: Missionary and Field Matron to the Navajos

In the fall of 1891 Mary Louise Eldridge and Mary Raymond were sent by the Women’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to work among the Navajos living along the San Juan River in northern New Mexico. There they founded the Navajo Methodist Mission, which later moved near Farmington. After Raymond’s unexpected death, Eldridge was appointed to replace her as a government field matron, and with the support of the Cambridge Indian Association, an auxiliary of the Women’s ...