Hulda Jane Stumpf was born Jan. 10, 1867 on a farm near Pine Flats, Indiana County, PA. and died in Kijabe, Kenya Colony, East Africa, on January 3rd, 1930. She was one of the children of J. R. Stumpf, the other children being Craig E., Violet M., Ralph, Eva G., Willis C., and Homer F. She took business courses which enabled her to aid her father in his ambitious department store enterprises (including the Stumpf five and ten cent stores!). At one time she was a court stenographer and later taught at Blair Business College in Indiana, PA. She was said to have had a fine soprano voice, having taken training in New York. In 1908 (in her early 40s) her deep-seated religious leanings led her to become a missionary to Africa under the non-denominational missionary society African Inland Mission of America. She served there 22 years, first in Kijabe, British East Africa, then in Kenya, Belgian Congo, and then returning to Kijabe. She was a teacher and later did secretarial work for the mission. She was one of a party that entertained President Theodore Roosevelt before his famous safari into the big game hunting jungles. In January of 1930 Hulda Stumpf was martyred, allegedly murdered by a native, the reason for the murder having no known justification but is supposed to be linked to her opposition to an unchristianlike native custom toward native young girls (female circumcision). It is reported that in this tribe, as in others, a man's wealth was reckoned according to the number of goats he possessed, therefore would offer a daughter to the man who, in return, would exchange the most goats, regardless of the maiden's wishes. Influenced by Christian teachings, the native girls began to flee to the mission for rescue from this and other primitive practices, and it is supposed that some irate native father, in protest against the mission's interference, sought revenge to the extent of taking Hulda's life. It is alleged that someone broke a window (she was rather deaf), entered the little home where she lived alone, tied a pillow around her face to stifle her cries, then left her to die; she is said to have died of strangulation (as well as circumcision and rape). Her grave is in Johannesburg, South Africa. Between 1893 and 1906 she had returned to Pennsylvania to care for her aged parents during their last illnesses and deaths. During these years back home Hulda prepared the Stumpf family history. (Extracted and edited from Eisenhower Lineage & Reference by Fannie B. Taylor-Richardson, 1957)