Shattuck
Portrait Image courtesy of Independent Association of Framingham State Alumni
Corinna
1821-1911
missionary heroine in turkey
Corinna Shattuck graduated from Framingham Normal School in 1871, completing an Advanced Course in
1873. After graduating, she devoted her entire life to missionary work in Turkey during the time of the Armenian
massacres. She saved the lives of over three-hundred refugees on the night of the Oorfa Massacre, December 28th,
1895, by hiding them in the school-room of the Protestant church for twenty-four hours until the massacre was
over. Her bravery saved men, widows and orphaned children who were now all in need of food and shelter, which
she provided in her Oorfa missionary. One of her pupils, Mary Harootoonyan, became blind, and Shattuck was able
to arrange for her to be sent to the Royal Normal College for the Blind in London, where she studied to become
a teacher of Braille. Shattuck was able to open up the Corinna Shattuck School for the Blind in Oorfa with
Harootoonyan on staff. She remained in Turkey until April of 1910, when her failing health pressed her to return
to America to find someone else to help run her schools. She died from consumption, known today as tuberculosis,
on May 22, 1910. The people of her Oorfa school memorialized her with a gravestone that reads: “In loving
memory, by the Oorfa Armenians. The sum of $110 was provided by these humble people of Oorfa in the heart of
Turkey, that they might give lasting expression of their indebtedness and love to their faithful missionary.” It was
erected in Newton, Massachusetts in 1911.