When she was but 29 years of age, her army surgeon husband died during their assignment in Antigua, and she returned to Scotland to care for her three young children and ailing father.
To support her family, she used her fine education and opened a school for girls in her hometown of Paisley and then a larger boarding school in Edinburgh. She also encouraged the formation of The Penny Society, a fund for mutual relief in case of sickness to which the subscribers contributed a penny weekly.
Jonathan Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the College of New Jersey now Princeton University , encouraged her to bring her gift for benevolence to the infant United States. She arrived with her children in and opened a school for girls.
The family joined the Presbyterian Church in Cedar Street as we were originally known in Isabella soon gave up teaching to devote full time to philanthropy and mission work. In she was among the founders of the New York Orphan Asylum, established to enable widowed parents to work while their children were safely and properly educated and cared for.
Later renamed the Graham Home for Children, it merged with other organizations over the years and today is known as the Graham Windham Home in Brooklyn, a benevolence long supported by our congregation.
