Anna Heikel

Anna Charlotta Heikel (2 February 1838 – 3 April 1907) was a Finland-Swedish teacher and director of the School for the Deaf in Jakobstad, Finland, from 1878 to 1898.

She was a temperance activist as well as a pioneer of the Baptist movement in Finland and early Sunday school founder.

[4] At 22 years old, Anna Heikel did an internship with the "apostle to the Deaf", Carl Henrik Alopaeus, in Turku.

[6] After the family moved from Turku to Pedersöre in 1861, Heikel and her father founded a school for the deaf the same year on the rectory property at his expense; her sister also taught there.

According to Dövas Församlingsblad, "Anna and her sister Selma were responsible for teaching in the beginning before a deaf teacher, Lorentz Eklund, was hired.

[15] In 1859, a number of members of the growing Baptist movement in Åland faced hearings in front of the Bishop's Chapter at the Turku Cathedral.

Among the Lutheran clergy present was Henrik Heikel, who took an interest in the Baptists' beliefs and spoke to them to learn more, although he did not convert.

[16] At one point she was called to a hearing at the cathedral chapter regarding her conversion; there she was defended by Alopaeus, who, while not Baptist himself, supported her beliefs.

[21] In 1861, Heikel and her sister Sofia Antoinetta (Netta) founded one of the first free church Sunday schools in the country.

[21] Swedish Baptist missionary and colonel Oscar Broady held temperance talks in Vaasa in the late 1870s.

Anna Heikel with student Frans Leijon in the 1890s.
Credit: Jakob (?) Grönroos