1849 - 1912
A Karen in America 1879
room United States
Born in 1849, Moung Edwin was among the very first Burmese students to study in the United States. His father was U Shway Bo, the first Pwo Karen pastor in Burma. After arriving in the US in 1875 he first attended the Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania (the same seminary that Martin Luther King Jr would attend 75 years later). He went on to study at Iowa University, graduating with a law degree in 1879 and returned to Burma where he practiced law in Tharawaddy until his death in 1912.
Pictured here is Moung Edwin's CDV or Carte de Visite, taken during his time in America. (CDVs were traded like business cards today and people often displayed their collection of CVDs in their living rooms) and the Iowa University law class of 1879, with Moung Edwin in the middle of the back row.