Erville E. Sowards was born near Culloden, West Virginia in 1897. He Graduated from Marshall College and studied at the University Chicago and Ohio State University. He went to Burma in 1921 to teach in mission schools and was later in charge of the Bassein Sgaw Karen field of 175 village churches and schools and the city high school. Genevieve Elizabeth Sharp Sowards was born June 29 1903 in Pittsburgh, Kansas. She received her BA from Ottawa University and M.Sc. from state college in Pittsburgh, Kanas. She went to Burma in 1927 under the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society to teach in the Sgaw Karen high school in Bassein. She, her husband Erville and daughter Myrtle returned to the U.S. in 1932. Erville returned to Burma in 1946 but Genevieve wasn’t able to return until 1960. Erville was Mission Field Secretary and also served as coordinator of the sesquicentennial celebrations in 1963. Genevieve helped with the Burma News, Baptist mission magazine and was editor of the English section of the Burma Baptist youth monthly magazine. When the mission compound was destroyed in the civil war in 1949, Erville was also a refugee with the local population.