Margaret McNiece Ellis was born in Matsuyama, Japan, on December 24, 1920, in the home of her father’s sister, Nina Ellis Dosker, a Presbyterian missionary, while in route from Persia to California. Her father, Wilder Prince Ellis, and her mother, Jessie Lee Ellis, were Presbyterian medical missionaries in Urumia and Tabriz, Persia, from 1915 to 1935. (Her father was born on the same day of the year, but in 1886.)
She died at age 99 on the evening of August 3, 2020, while at the Peninsula del Rey assisted living facility, Daly City, California.
Schooling
Her parents went back to Iran in 1921, and she lived in northwest Iran from 1921 to 1935. She learned to speak Turkish and Syriac.
As she was taught at home in Urumia and Tabriz, Persia, she never went to public school until her parents were on furlough for a year in Berkeley, California, where she went to elementary school.
In 1935, her mother (along with her colleague, Bernice Cochran) took their children to Geneva, Switzerland, for a year to learn French at the International School. There she also visited the League of Nations.
In 1936, she visited the famous museums of Europe, where she saw the great paintings that she had studied in black and white in the home-school classroom in Iran.
Her family then went to Wooster, Ohio, where there were residences for missionaries home on furlough.
She graduated from Wooster High School in 1937 and then entered the College of Wooster, graduating with a BA in English in 1941. (Both her parents had graduated in 1910 from the College of Wooster.)
She enrolled in Teachers College, Columbia University, and received her Master’s Degree in English Education in 1942.
From 1942 to 1943, she taught school in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Career
Her first teaching job, in 1942 to 1943, was at Hagerstown Junior High in Hagerstown, Maryland.
In 1943, she married Odus Lee Moore, Jr. As he was Chief Inspector of the Fairchild Aircraft plant, Hagerstown, Maryland, from 1942 to 1946, they bought their first house in 1943 across from the golf course with a lovely view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Her son John Franklin Moore was born in 1946; her daughter Kathleen McNiece Moore in 1947; and her son Kenneth Parker Moore in 1954. (Both Kathleen, in 1969, and Ken, in 1978, graduated from Wooster College.)
Her husband was the manager at textile-manufacturing plants in Salisbury, North Carolina (1947); Red Springs, North Carolina (1948); Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania (1949); Shavertown, Pennsylvania (1950); and then Goshen, Indiana (1954). She taught Kindergarten in Red Springs, North Carolina, and Goshen, Indiana and eighth grade in Harrison Township, Indiana.
Her family moved to Laurinburg, North Carolina, in 1962, when her husband succeeded his father as publisher of the Laurinburg Exchange newspaper. She taught high school in Laurinburg and later Raeford, North Carolina.
Between 1966 and 1971, she taught English Literature at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, North Carolina, and later at Pembroke State University in Pembroke, North Carolina.
Iran Again
In 1971, because of her mother’s connection with missionary activity in Iran, her mother told her of the opening of a women’s college in Tehran. In August 1971, she returned to Iran to teach college English Literature. (Dr. Frances Gray, the founding president, designed the Damavand College curriculum to help Iranian women to better understand both Iranian and American cultures.)
She took classes to learn to speak and understand Farsi.
Returning to the land of her childhood was like returning home. She was especially delighted to be able to teach a class of English literature to an unusual group of women, older than the usual college freshman. Their insights into the works of Shakespeare, and other great poets, playwrights, and novelists in English, were an inspiration to her.
She set up a Women’s Studies program and convened a Conference on Women, which included Mahnaz Afghami, then Director of Women’s Affairs for the Iranian government.
A major challenge for her was the closing of the College in early 1979, requiring all the native and foreign professors to resign.
California
In 1979, she went to first Charlotte, North Carolina, and then Daly City, California. She taught ESL and English at adult schools in Daly City, Pacifica, and Redwood City. Besides teaching, she read American and Iranian women writers.
Before retiring at age 77, she taught English for many years at Florence Crittenton Services in San Francisco, California.
She was active in the League of Women Voters.
American Association of University Women
She first joined the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in Goshen, Indiana, in 1955, and resumed membership in the AAUW San Bruno (now the North Peninsula) branch in 1980, enjoying fellowship and working toward equity for women and girls.
She had traveled to 45 of the United States as well as to England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Cuba, so she always felt at home in the branch’s International Relations Group, as the members had also traveled abroad. She liked to discuss the articles in the Great Decisions Manual.
She funded the Jesse and Wilder Ellis International Fellowship (to honor her parents), established by the AAUW North Peninsula Branch, as an AAUW International Fellowship Fund. The criteria for this fellowship are outstanding academic ability, professional potential, interest in studies of girls and women in her home country, and prior commitment to the advancement of girls and women through civic, community, and/or professional work.
