Mrs. House’s plea for the women of Siam found a response very near
home. It so happened that in the spring of 1872 Secretaries Irving
and Ellinwood, of the Foreign Board, addressed a meeting of the
Synod of Albany, held at Troy, New York. The Woman’s Presbyterian
Board of Foreign Missions of the Synod of Albany met at the same
place, and united with the Synod to hear the addresses. The result
was the organisation of a branch of the Women’s Board to cover the
Troy Presbytery, whence the name “Troy Branch.” The organising
group not only undertook to establish auxiliaries in their
respective churches but resolved as a Branch to assume as their
first and special object a boarding school for girls in Bangkok;
and to inaugurate this project they commissioned Mrs. House, who
was known personally to many of the women of the new organisation.
To begin the work the Branch agreed to provide three thousand
dollars; and for the next four years they raised some one thousand
four hundred and forty dollars. So it happened that Mrs. House
became the official head of the projected boarding school for girls.
The enterprise which was now committed to her was much larger in
scope than the work she already had under way; and even with small
beginnings there was need of an assistant to share the burden,
lighten the responsibility and aid in council. While Mrs. House
was in correspondence with several young women whose interests had
been turned towards Siam by her addresses a young woman of her own
church at Waterford, Arabella Anderson, offered herself.