Susanna+Carson+Rijnhart

Susie Carson was born in 1868 in Chatham, Ontario. At the age of twenty she graduated from Trinity College in Toronto as a medical doctor. She was in private practice for six years in Ontario. In 1894 she met Petrus Rijnhart, a Dutch-born former missionary with the China Inland Mission. Rijnhart had worked in the Netherlands for the Salvation Army but was sent to Canada in 1886 to avoid charges of sexual assault. He eventually made it to China and worked for three years with the CIM. He was dismissed by CIM in 1893 as an ‘imposter” after stirring up “Rijnhart’s hornet’s nest."[1] A charismatic speaker, he was lecturing in Canada and soliciting financial support to return to China and work in Tibet when he met Susie. The couple was married in September 1894 and before the end of the year departed Canada for China. Unlike most missionaries, they were independent, not representatives of any missionary organization. Apparently, however, the funds they had raised in Canada were adequate for their expenses. Independent missionaries were often criticized as loose cannons, more likely to cause trouble than to achieve progress in the goal of making China a Christian country