Both parents had Boston connections: Edward Renouf was the son of a Boston-born, Harvard-educated, Episcopalian priest; Annie Whelpley was a great-great-granddaughter of Gov.

In her passport application in 1915, she submitted an affidavit explaining her protracted stay abroad: "...I ceased to reside in the United States about 1881...I have since resided temporarily at Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland...I arrived at Locarno, Switzerland where I am now temporarily residing in December 1915; I came to Europe to engage in my work as a painter and composer and am now obliged to remain here on account of my health....I maintain the following ties of family in the United States: husband, professor Edward Renouf, Monkton, Maryland and brother: James Davenport Whelpley, c/o Century Magazine, New York...my husband owns real estate and I receive $1,500 annually from him.

In September 1899, having left Harvard before earning a second degree, he accepted a position at the Boston Latin School, teaching German and history.

[4][5] In addition to tax collection, its responsibilities included postal administration, weather reporting, and policing the China coast and the Yangtze River.

The Manchu regime's allegiance to the traditional patterns to which it had clung for so long was finally broken in the face of overwhelming Western technological superiority.

In 1910, the editors of Education wrote: With remarkable thoroughness this book of four hundred and eighty-five pages covers the history of the entire world in outline.

But in simple language and in a manner to meet the demand for an elementary presentation of this great subject the author has covered the ground with a book that has much to recommend it for school and general use.

The author intended it for use primarily in the schools of the Far East, especially in those of the Chinese Empire...If the general purpose is kept in mind, we excuse the author, evidently an American teacher in Pei Yang University, when he devotes only three and four lines to the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth respectively; a scant page to the formation, adoption, and analysis of the Constitution of the United States; and only five and one-half pages to the discussion of our national history.