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Eleanor Wilson was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, and educated at Simmons College and the New York Biblical Seminary (Columbia). In 1925 she went to Japan as a missionary teacher for the Congregational Church, and was stationed at the Kobe Theological Seminary for Women. From 1933-1935 she worked in the office of the American Board of Foreign Missions, Boston. In 1935 she went to the Mission Training School in Kusaie, Caroline Islands, as teacher, later principal, remaining until 1941. During World War II she was in the United States, lecturing for the mission board. In 1945 she went to Hawaii, where she was ordained a Christian Church minister, and in 1946 resumed missionary work in the Pacific area, particularly in the Marshall and Caroline Islands.
In 1950 Wilson became the captain of the Morning Star VI, one of a sequence of mission ships in the Pacific. She retired in 1961.
Wilson's career is the subject of a book by Maribelle Cormack, The Lady Was a Skipper (N.Y., 1956), and in the Maribelle Cormack Papers (Ax 418) at the University of Oregon are notes about, and letters from, Eleanor Wilson.
Eleanor Wilson died in 1969 in a Claremont, California retirement center. She was 80 years old.
The collection consists almost entirely of outgoing correspondence, the vast majority of them written to "Dear Folks." There is a several year period during which Wilson wrote these letters very consistently, almost one per week. These letters contain many details about her work, along with many personal anecdotes of her daily experiences. There is also one folder of outgoing letters to Wilson's brother, Theodore Wilson. Miscellaneous material in the collection includes church bulletins and newsletters.