Edna Ramseyer Kaufman (1910–2001): a life of service
Al Ramseyer’s eldest sister: refugee-children’s director in Vichy France, founder of Mennonite women’s wartime service, Ph.D., dean of women for nearly 30 years, builder of a college house, traveller to Mexico, Gabon, India and Paraguay, cookbook editor, columnist, and the family genealogist behind a 45,000-name book.
Summary
- 1940, France: the first director of a Mennonite (MCC) children’s home in France, at La Rouvière near Marseille, for Spanish, French and Jewish refugee children. That October she helped a Danzig Mennonite woman and her son flee the Nazis toward Australia.
- 1943–45, women’s service: at MCC’s 1943 relief training school she pressed for service openings for Mennonite women equal to the men’s Civilian Public Service. The result was the 1944 women’s summer units in mental hospitals, which grew into MCC Voluntary Service (about 1,575 summer volunteers by 1960). In July 1945 Eleanor Roosevelt visited her unit at Poughkeepsie at her invitation.
- Ph.D., Ohio State, 1956: The Role of the Home Economics Unit in Ohio Colleges in Education for Family Living.
- Bluffton College 1936–65: dean of women and head of home economics. She built Mary Alva House (1958) and gave it to the college. Named Woman of the Year by the Ohio chapters of Delta Kappa Gamma (1964).
- Later: India with Ohio State’s mission to Punjab Agricultural University (1965–67); Bethel College, Kansas (1967–75); president of the Bethel College Women’s Association; editor of Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery (20,000 copies); 50 years of family genealogy.
Timeline
| When | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 18 Jan 1910 | Born at Smithville, Wayne County, Ohio, to Alvin C. and Mary Ellen (Schrock) Ramseyer; baptized at Oak Grove Mennonite Church | MLA obituary; Jacob Schrag Family Record (1974) |
| c.1932 | Graduates from Bluffton College (Oak Grove’s 175th-anniversary booklet lists her among its college graduates, 1932) | Living Our Name: 175 Years |
| 1930s | M.A., Ohio State University | Rich, Mennonite Women (1983); Schrag record |
| 1936 | Joins Bluffton College: home economics, and from about 1938 dean of women; member of the National Association of Deans of Women (listed 1939–54) | obituary; NADW journal membership lists |
| 1939 | Quaker (AFSC) work camp | The American Friend, 25 May 1939; Bush, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties (1998) |
| 1940 | Director of the children’s home at La Rouvière, Marseille, run by MCC with the Quakers: room for 48 children and 4 staff; “the first Mennonite director of an MCC children’s home in France” | Pare, L’action sociale mennonite en France (1997); MQR 96 (2022); Homan, MHB April 2010 |
| Jul 1940 | Ernest Bennett asks her to contact the French (Alsatian) Mennonites by letter to see what they need | MHB 1984 |
| Aug 1940 | Meets Harold S. Bender, Bennett and Lyon’s mayor Édouard Herriot; they agree on food for kindergartens in Saint-Étienne and Lyon | MQR 96 (2022) |
| Oct 1940 | Meets Ilse (Harder) Fürstenberg, a Danzig Mennonite whose husband was of Jewish descent, in Marseille; hears her story and helps with money (through Bennett) while Ilse seeks exit visas. Ilse and her son Felix later crossed into Spain on foot and reached Melbourne in January 1941 | Homan, “From Danzig to Down Under”, MHB Jan 2012 |
| Dec 1940 | Hands La Rouvière over to Charlotte Gerber and returns home. A German social worker she met in France, Brigitte Schneider (interned three times in French camps), later came to study at Bluffton “largely because of an acquaintance begun with Miss Edna Ramseyer in France” | MQR 96; The Mennonite 1942 |
| 1941 | Cook and dietician, CPS Camp 13 (Bluffton, Indiana), MCC’s first CPS camp; writes a “Tid Bits” column for the camp paper | Bluffton Peace Sentinel 1941 |
| Summer 1942 | With an AFSC project in Mexico “to create a better understanding between the two great countries” | AFSC 1942 annual report; The Mennonite 1942 |
| 1942 | Paper “Home Economics and the Mennonite Family”, Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems, Winona Lake | The Mennonite 1942 |
| 1943 | At MCC’s relief training school (Goshen) she leads women who send a 24-point letter to MCC director Orie O. Miller asking for Mennonite women’s service; founds the “C.O. Girls” at Goshen (12 Aug 1943). She later said she always stressed “service”, never “a new role for women” | MQR 66 (1992); Goossen, Women Against the Good War (1997) |
| 1944 | Matron and teacher of MCC’s first women’s summer unit, 25 women at the State Hospital, Howard, Rhode Island (Lois Gunden led the Ypsilanti unit). Tours churches with Gunden to promote the units. Article “Will Ye Heed the Call” (The Mennonite) | Gingerich, Service for Peace (1949); Goshen College Record 1944; MQR 96 |
| Nov 1944 | Inspires the first Mennonite Women’s Conference at Bluffton (84 women from five states) | The Mennonite 1944 |
| 9 Jul 1945 | Director of the women’s summer unit at Hudson River State Hospital, Poughkeepsie. Eleanor Roosevelt and her secretary visit at her invitation to discuss foreign relief training; Roosevelt’s “My Day” column of 11 Jul 1945 praises the hospital’s conscientious objectors | CPS Unit 144; Taylor, Acts of Conscience (2009) |
| 1947 | Paper “Open Doors for Mennonite Women in Social Work”, Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems, Goshen | Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems 1947 |
| Summer 1948 | Co-leads a Mennonite college group to Europe with Milo Kauffman (Hesston): a study tour of England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany and France, then matron of the MCC reconstruction unit at Frankfurt. Her father died at sea on 23 July on his way to visit her | The Mennonite 1948; 1949 Mennonite Yearbook; Alvin Sr.’s obituary |
| 1950 | Counsellor visiting MCC summer service units | The Mennonite 1950 |
| 1950–51 | On leave to study for her doctorate at Ohio State | The Mennonite 1950 |
| 1956 | Ph.D., Ohio State University. Dissertation: The Role of the Home Economics Unit in Ohio Colleges in Education for Family Living | Titles of Completed Theses in Home Economics … 1955–1956 (USDA), no. 34 |
| 1958–59 | Plans and builds Mary Alva House, a home-management house for home economics students, named for her parents; deeds it to Bluffton College in 1959. She also lived there | MLA obituary; Ista 1960 |
| 1960–63 | Adviser to Bluffton’s foreign students’ club and girls’ gospel teams | Ista 1960–63 |
| 1962 | Teaches with Operation Crossroads Africa in Gabon | MLA obituary |
| Apr 1964 | ”Woman of the Year”, Delta Kappa Gamma (Ohio, Alpha Delta State), speaking on “Keys to Changing Cultures”; article “Understanding and Appreciating Changing Cultures”, Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin 31 (Fall 1964), p. 13 | Circleville Herald, 10 Apr 1964 |
| 1964–65 | Courtship by letter with Ed G. Kaufman, former Bethel College president, a widower of 73. She asked him to read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and mark what he disagreed with; he worried about following her to India “like a fifth wheel” | Juhnke, Creative Crusader (1994), pp. 244–8 |
| 10 Jun 1965 | Marries Ed G. Kaufman | Jacob Schrag Family Record; Juhnke |
| Jun 1965–1967 | India, with Ohio State University’s agricultural education and research mission to Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. Visits India’s Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore (24 Jan 1966). They came home in 1967 via Kabul, Moscow, Kiev, Vienna, Prague, Frankfurt and the Mennonite World Conference in Amsterdam | OSU School of Home Economics history; CSIR News 15 (1966); Juhnke |
| 1967–75 | Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas: head of home economics and dean of women (half-time from 1971). Juhnke: the move “was a sacrifice for Edna”; Bethel’s program was weaker than the one she had built at Bluffton | Juhnke, p. 248 |
| 1970–74 | President of the Bethel College Women’s Association, credited as “the prod for a rejuvenated Association”; the association received Bethel’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1979 | Women of the Hour 1934–84 |
| 1974 | Compiles Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery, 1874–1974 for the Kansas Mennonite centennial: recipes and histories from nine ethnic Mennonite groups; it sold out in six weeks, and four printings totalled 20,000 copies by 1983 | Women of the Hour; Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery (1974) |
| 1980 | Ed dies; she and his daughter start the project that became his biography (Creative Crusader, 1994) | Juhnke, preface |
| 1981–90 | ”Homemaker’s Notebook” column, Mennonite Weekly Review; hosts the Thursday Bethel faculty coffees and bakes their bread | MLA obituary; Encircled (1986) |
| 1986 | Chairs the staff committee of Thresher Table, Bethel’s centennial cookbook | Thresher Table (1986) |
| 1991 | Article “Extending the Table”, The Mennonite 106, p. 430 | Mennonite 1991 index |
| — | Visited the Paraguayan Chaco Mennonite colonies (a recipe she brought back is in Voth, Mennonite Foods & Folkways from South Russia, 1990) | Voth 1990 |
| 1950s–2001 | Family genealogy: 50+ years; 45,000 names; the basis of the 2002 Family Record. Hours of taped “story telling” | Ramseyer Family Record 2002 - front matter (pp. IV-VIII) |
| 5 Aug 2001 | Dies at Schowalter Villa, Hesston, Kansas, aged 91 | MLA obituary |
How she paid for it (Claude, 2026-10-31)
No source gives her finances directly. The pieces:
| Activity | Who paid | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Relief work in France, 1940 | MCC and the Quakers (AFSC) paid travel and upkeep; relief workers got maintenance and a small allowance, not a salary | MCC/AFSC sources; standard practice |
| CPS Camp 13, 1941; women’s units, 1944–45 | MCC; in the hospital units the women were hospital employees paid “a moderate income” | The Mennonite 1944 |
| Mexico 1942; Europe 1948 | AFSC project; the 1948 tour was sponsored by the Council of Mennonite and Affiliated Colleges, with MCC arranging passage | AFSC 1942 report; The Mennonite 1948 |
| India 1965–67 | Paid post on Ohio State’s agricultural mission to Punjab Agricultural University (a U.S. aid contract) | OSU history; CSIR News |
| Everyday life, the Ph.D. | Her own salary as professor and dean for 29 years; deans lived in college housing | yearbooks |
| Mary Alva House, 1958 | Apparently her own money: she “planned and built” it and deeded it to the college in 1959, so she owned it. It is named for her parents, Mary and Alva[in] | MLA obituary |
| Genealogy travel in Europe and the U.S. | Presumably her own money | — |
The family fortune behind it: her father, A.C. “Potato King” Ramseyer, was among the wealthiest farmers around Smithville (see The Ramseyer farm fortune). He died in July 1948, and a daughter’s share of his estate would explain how a dean on a small Mennonite-college salary could build and give away a house ten years later. Juhnke also notes that Ed Kaufman “did receive land or other resources to manage from … each of his three wives”, which suggests Edna brought property into the marriage. Edna and her stepson Gordon Kaufman “supported financially” the writing of Ed’s biography in the 1990s. Not yet proven: A.C. Ramseyer’s will and estate file (Wayne County Probate Court, 1948) would show her inheritance.
In her own words
- On the photo of the girls in her care at La Rouvière (French, Alsatian and German Jewish children): “Can you see a difference? I guess children are very similar. Too similar to fight about the differences.” (MS 300, Box 9)
- 1944, to Mennonite women: “Have you ever wished that you could prove your convictions on peace and war as your boy friend, husband, brother, or son has?” (“Will Ye Heed the Call”, The Mennonite)
- 1947: social work “as old as Christianity”, aiming at “a wholesome, happy and self-respecting Christian citizen”; she urged training Mennonite women professionally for it (“Open Doors for Mennonite Women in Social Work”)
Her writings (found so far)
- “Home Economics and the Mennonite Family”, 1942 conference paper.
- “Tid Bits” column, Bluffton Peace Sentinel (CPS Camp 13), 1941.
- “Will Ye Heed the Call”, The Mennonite, 1944.
- “Open Doors for Mennonite Women in Social Work”, Proceedings of the Sixth Conference on Mennonite Cultural Problems (1947), pp. 27ff. (online)
- The Role of the Home Economics Unit in Ohio Colleges in Education for Family Living, Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1956.
- “Understanding and Appreciating Changing Cultures”, Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin 31 (Fall 1964).
- Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery, 1874–1974 (compiler; foreword), 1974 (online).
- Thresher Table (1986), staff committee chair.
- “Homemaker’s Notebook” column, Mennonite Weekly Review, 1981–90.
- “Extending the Table”, The Mennonite, 1991.
- Family data in the Jacob Schrag Family Record (1974, with Ed) and the Family Record of Johannes and Barbara Ramseyer (2002).
- A diary of 1940 (MSS 500) and a scrapbook (MS 300).
What has been written about her
- Gerlof Homan, “Friends and Enemies: The World War II Origins of MCC Work in France”, Mennonite Historical Bulletin 71 (April 2010), with her photo at La Rouvière.
- Gerlof Homan, “From Danzig to Down Under”, Mennonite Historical Bulletin 73 (January 2012): the Fürstenberg escape.
- Mennonite Quarterly Review 96 (2022): article on Lois Gunden and MCC children’s homes in France, 1941–43, using her papers.
- Rachel Waltner Goossen, Women Against the Good War (1997), and “Women in Alternative Service”, MQR 66 (1992).
- Steven J. Taylor, Acts of Conscience (2009): the Howard and Poughkeepsie units.
- Perry Bush, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties (1998) and Dancing with the Kobzar (Bluffton history, 2000).
- James C. Juhnke, Creative Crusader: Edmund G. Kaufman (1994), pp. 244–8: the courtship and marriage.
- Robert Kreider, Looking Back into the Future (1998): an anecdote of her engagement.
- Melvin Gingerich, Service for Peace (1949): CPS Camp 13 and Howard.
- Paul Toews, Mennonites in American Society 1930–1970 (1996).
- Pare, L’action sociale mennonite en France au XXe siècle (1997).
- Obituary: MLA Biograph Wiki.
Archives
| Collection | Where | What |
|---|---|---|
| Edna Ramseyer Kaufman Papers (MS 300) | Mennonite Library & Archives, Bethel College, Kansas | 7.45 cu ft: France scrapbook and photos (boxes 1, 5, 9, 16, 25), CPS papers |
| Edna Ramseyer Diary, MSS 500 | same | her 1940 France diary |
| Oral history: interview by Kurt Goering, 27 Apr 1976 | same (Schowalter Oral History) | her CPS and relief work, on tape |
| Interview, 1984 | used for Encircled (1986) | |
| Edna Ramseyer Kaufman files | Bluffton University (Musselman) Library | the genealogy material left out of the 2002 book |
| Ramseyer correspondence, MCC-CPS collection | Mennonite Church USA Archives (Goshen/Elkhart) | 1943 letters with Orie O. Miller |
| ”Resume Dr. Edna Kaufman”, folder 184, box 7, Faculty personnel files | Bethel College archives | her CV |
Not her
“Edna Kaufman, matron, Gulfport, Mississippi, 1948” (wife of Orlo Kaufman of Moundridge, Kansas) is another woman. So is any “Mrs. Ed. G. Kaufman” before 1965: Ed’s earlier wives were Hazel Dester (d. 1948) and Anna Miller Baumgartner (d. 1961).
Still to do
- Find her dissertation title and year (found 2026-10-31: Ohio State, 1956)
- Find her M.A. thesis (Ohio State, 1930s): archive.org full text and web searched 2026-11-01, not found online (she appears as “Edna G. Ramseyer”, dean of women, in the deans’ association lists 1939–49). Ask Ohio State University Archives or the Bluffton archives task/human
- Read Eleanor Roosevelt’s “My Day” for 11 Jul 1945 (read 2026-11-01; see below)
Eleanor Roosevelt, "My Day", 11 Jul 1945 (Hyde Park, Tuesday)
She writes that “last night” (Monday 9 July) she went to the Hudson River State Hospital to talk to a group of conscientious objectors working in the state hospitals for the summer, and that “this group belongs to the Mennonite church”. The superintendent told her they had raised the standard of patient care and had helped him expose abuses he had never before been able to prove. She adds that many of them were preparing to do relief work abroad for their churches after the war, and that the hospital training would help. She does not name Edna or the women’s unit. Source: Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, GWU, My Day, 11 Jul 1945.
- Send the Bethel MLA request (draft in
Attachments/request-to-bethel-mla-edna-kaufman-papers.md): ask also for MSS 500 (diary) and the 1976 Goering interview task/human - Bluffton University archives: the Edna Ramseyer Kaufman genealogy files, and Mary Alva House records task/human
- Get a copy of the dissertation (OSU Libraries; possibly via interlibrary loan) task/human
- A.C. Ramseyer’s will and estate file, Wayne County Probate Court, 1948: each child’s share task/human
Record compiled 31 October 2026.
About this research
Supporting documentation is linked throughout. This project is an exercise in AI-assisted research and development, and I haven’t manually verified every link or conclusion. All transcriptions and translations of Swiss parish records were made with AI, and their accuracy should be treated accordingly.