Papers of Amy P. Row, 1934-1992

Amy P. Row was born in Cornwall, England, on March 7, 1884. She had one brother and one sister; her father founded the Home for Indian Seamen in London. Row was educated at Bella Vista College, and around 1909 left a position at the East London Children's Hospital to travel for five years through Norway, Belgium, South Africa, Australia, Tasmania, Canada, and New Zealand. She spent two years in New Zealand as a missionary with Reverend Fred H. Spencer of the British and Foreign Bible Society, working with the Maori. Row came to the United States as a nanny, working for Edith Wilson Sayre (daughter of Woodrow Wilson), among others. As part of her interest in foreign students, Row founded International House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1924, and headed it for a year.

In 1931, Row returned to England for a visit, and there met Gandhi, who was visiting a mutual friend, Muriel Lester, who ran a settlement house, Kingsley Hall, in east London. According to a clipping from the Boston Transcript, Row also worked at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology that same year; this, however, MIT was not able to confirm.

Row began teaching art at the Framingham Reformatory for Women, in Framingham, Mass., first as a volunteer for 16 months, and then in 1933 as a paid staff member. She worked until 1940, when her job was eliminated due to a loss of state funding. Row's own paintings were exhibited in the Concord Library in 1973.

The donor of the papers met Row at the Thoreau Nursing Home in Concord, Mass., in the early 1970s. Row was living at the Walden Nursing Home when she died on January 6, 1977.