When Famine-Afflicted Children of Poona Received Aid from America

One fine evening in August 1879 in Pennington, New Jersey, a young William Wynn Bruere and his friend, Stevens, were passing a church where Bishop Thoburn of the Methodist Church was holding services.

- Chinmay Damle

It was raining and they had no umbrella, so to get out of the rain, and with a sense of great curiosity, the two young men entered the church to see what was going on. When they came out two hours later, both decided to go as missionaries to India. Bruere was twenty-two years old then.

His first five years in India were in Bombay, where he and Stevens shared a room. In 1885, he was asked to receive a young lady named Carrie Palmer at Bombay Harbour. Carrie was a new missionary recruit.

She was born in Boston in 1860 and raised in a religious atmosphere. At an early age, she felt "the call" to India, and when she was twenty-four, she sailed from Boston for India under Dr. Collison's Faith Mission.

William offered to teach Carrie Marathi. She readily agreed. A year later, they were married and settled in Poona.

The Rev. William Wynn Bruere was in sole charge of the Poona Marathi Church and Circuits. The Marathi congregations had grown in numbers and interests over the years and included many from Pandita Ramabai's Widows' Home. A Christian boys' school and orphanage were maintained at Poona, with about 150 boys.

When the famine engulfed the Bombay Presidency in 1896, Carrie decided to "get some famine children." She had no money in hand. She had been advised by her friends not to venture into the famine relief work in the absence of funds. But she had already started her work with the help of her husband. They had almost a hundred children from in and around Poona in January 1897 with no means to support them. The American Marathi Mission was unable to help her.