Eliza Jane Gillett Bridgman

[2] She continued her career in education and was appointed principal at another boarding school at age twenty-two.

[2] Gillett followed her childhood desire to be a missionary and was appointed as one to China with the Protestant Episcopal Church on November 14, 1843.

Bridgman believed that Eliza was his answer to his prayer for a wife; he proposed and the two were married on June 28, 1845, in Colonial Chapel.

[5] In 1862 she was forced to take a furlough in the United States due to health concerns after her husband's death, during which she was run over by a sled.

The academy later became the Women's College of Yenching University and is credited with educating a large number of female Chinese leaders.