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Show These were the halcyon years of the Young Ladies Branch and under the able leadership until 1898 of the President, ]\liss Mary Floyd Williams, and her executive assistants, the organization was carried beyond the confines of Northern California into the other Branches, and a great deal of interest was fostered among the Sunday Schools and Christian Endeavor Societies of the Pacific Coast. The year of 1894 saw the Board established in headquarters, a room on the fifth floor of the Y. M. C. A. Building in San Francisco, used jointly by the women of the Board and of the Woman's Home Missionary Union, and for a Thursday Prayermeeting. The Young Ladies Branch established a Missionary Library, laying the foundations of a regular supply of missionary literature and study classes. Two notable events made the year of 1894 memorable; the Congress of Missions held in San Francisco in connection with the Mid- Winter Exposition, which brought leaders from all over the world to present the cause in its most attractive aspects, and the presence at the annual meeting of the Board in September, of the American Board deputation to Japan, Dr. Amory Bradford, Dr. Johnson, of Chicago, Dr. Davis of Kyoto, Mrs. Joseph Cooke and Dr. James L. Barton of the American Board. In 1896 the change was made from monthly to quarterly all-day public meetings, with committee meetings for business in the intervening months-a foreshadowing of the establishment of the Northern California Branch, with the Board as an executive body. It was a difficult year both at home, due to the financial depression, and on the field, where the teachers in the Doshisha resigned, and in Turkey the Kaya Bashi Boarding School in Brousa was closed, to be opened in 1897 as an Armenian orphanage. The twenty-fifth anniversary was celebrated in 1898 with appropriate sessions in both San Francisco and Oakland. Six charter members were present in seats of honor on the platform. The following year the coffers of the Board were enriched by its share of the "Mary J. Stuart Fund" a legacy of eleven acres of prunes left to three of the Congregational Benevolent Societies, the Woman's Board of Missions for the Pacific being one of the bene-r 20 1 |