Jessie D. Gutzlaff

Karl Gutzlaff was a German missionary to Thailand and Korea and the first Lutheran missionary to China. He met his second wife, Mary, on the south coast of China where she operated a school for the blind.

Mary met a four-year-old girl there that tugged at her heartstrings so deeply that she wanted to adopt the child. While Karl was completing a Chinese translation of the Bible, Mary brought her to New York. She found friends in 1843 who could support the girl while she returned to China to pass her work on to others. Unfortunately, she died in 1849.

The girl was named Jessie and her benefactor secured a place for her at the Ohio Institution for the Blind at Columbus, Ohio. A matron at the school named Jane Middleton mentored her until 1849 when she convinced Jessie to move with her back to Jane’s hometown near Rochester, New York where she opened a school for orphan girls. 

The circumstances there in the 1850s seem to have been suspicious enough to arouse the interest of William Chapin of Philadelphia. He was principal of the prestigious Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind (now Overbrook School for the Blind).

Why was he interested? He knew Jessie well, having been one of her teachers and the principal at the Ohio Institution until moving to Philadelphia in 1849. He had also been Jane Middleton’s boss, and she left Columbus the same year he did.

A woman who knew of the circumstances in Rochester sent a letter to Mr. Chapin about the school. She wrote, “It is known that Miss Middleton took the child in her home for remunerative object. She would have gatherings for the benefit of Jessie, to buy a piano.” She said Miss Middleton was “not an easy taskmaster” but admitted that nobody lodged a complaint of ill treatment.

With the support of a pastor from the neighborhood, William was able to bring Jessie to Philadelphia in 1861 when she was 13. He served at the school for nearly 40 years. Among his accomplishments were developing a comprehensive plan of education, publishing the first embossed dictionary for the blind, and advocating for employment opportunities. 

He even opened a store on Walnut Street to sell products made by the students, and established a home for working adults. This is where Jessie resided the rest of her life. At her arrival the school was at 20th & Race Streets, today’s site of the Franklin Institute. She became a member of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church at 19th & Walnut until the school relocated to the present site at 64th & Malvern Avenue in 1899.

Being a Christian since her early days with her missionary mother, she had learned in a special way to “walk by faith, not by sight.” Her years in Sunday School at Holy Trinity recharged her spirit as she worked each day.

She had the job of proofreading pages of braille and was highly regarded by the librarian at the institution. She wrote, “Miss Jessie began to read proof about January, 1893, soon after American Braille was introduced into this school. She read all proof except mathematics and the foreign languages. According to records she has read in American Braille (machine work) 52,679 pages, covering 426 titles…she was always a conscientious worker, and whether it was machine or handwork, she was distressed if anyone found a mistake she had overlooked.”

Over the years, Jessie saved a portion of the money she earned as a proofreader and bought stock in the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her $5000 estate was left to the Episcopal Board of Missions to provide scholarships for Bible students in China.

Jessie was able to remain in residence at the institution until she died at age 82 in 1920. Many visually-impaired adults were not as fortunate. In the early 1900s the city had 21 homes for the aged but only two would accept the blind. To address the lack of care for this elderly population, the Chapin Memorial Home for the Aged Blind was established in 1908, named in honor of Jessie’s teacher and longtime friend. 

One of those residents of the home in the years that followed was a teenager at the Institute at the same time as Jessie. He went on to get a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, then practiced law and taught it. He was on the board of the Chapin home, but spent his last two years there before being buried in the same lot as Jessie. His name is John Francis Maher and his Notable life story is found here. 

The Chapin home had purchased seven large lots in Section 140 where its former residents could be laid to rest, and that’s where both Jessie and John Maher are buried, near this marker for the home. The inscription across the bottom of her gravestone quotes Psalm 17:15, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.”