Guide to the Susan McDowell Currell Papers

Susan McDowell Currell was born July 21, 1889. Her father, Dr. William Spenser Currell (1858-1943) married Susan’s mother Sarah Scott in 1888. At the time of Susan’s birth, Dr. Currell was a professor of English at Davidson College in North Carolina. In 1895, the family moved to Lexington, Va., where Dr. Currell joined the faculty of Washington and Lee University. In 1914, Dr. Currell was appointed president and later dean of the graduate school at the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS) appointed Susan Currell as a missionary to Japan in 1920. She first worked in Marugame doing evangelical and educational work. From the fall of 1928 to the spring of 1929, she stayed at a nursing home in Karuizawa where she received treatment for tuberculosis. She returned to the United States in 1941.

After World War II, the PCUS posted Currell to Kochi. She arrived in March 1949 and continued her evangelical and educational work, including teaching at Seiwa Girls’ High School. She retired in 1958 and returned to the United States, living in Black Mountain, N.C. until shortly before her death when she moved to the Sunnyside Presbyterian Home in Harrisonburg, Va. She died in July 1970.