Flipping through eBay for local memorabilia often calls up incredible local stories. Such is the case with an eBay auction titled “1945 WW2 Era Miss SA Erickson Teacher Warren PA Member Baptist Foreign.” The photograph is a black-and-white headshot with a short, cryptic story typewritten on the back that no one in Warren seemed to know, when asked:

“Miss S.A. Erickson, teacher, Warren, Pa., was among 11 members of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society beheaded by the Japanese on Panay, P.I., two years after invasion of the Philippines. Her only offense, and the only offense of the others, was the ministration of spiritual and medical aid to Philippine guerrillas. News of the deaths had been withheld until now for security reasons. A 9-year-old missionary child was among those beheaded.”

The note on the back of the photograph is dated June 1, 1945.

Not a lot to go on. But that’s what makes local research so much fun.

With just the name S.A. Erickson to follow up on, the Warren County Historical Society proved a wealth of information, in the form of an obituary record that simply read: “Erickson, Signe; Professor of Religious Education; Killed by Japanese in WWII in Philippines (Hopevale) 12/20/43.”

Historical research is most fun when it presents in the form of mystery.

With a first name, and the help of Casey Ferry, who used that first name to track down volume 30 number 1, printed January of 1986, of Stepping Stones, the Warren County Historical Society’s publication which runs down regional stories of all shapes and sorts.

It turns out that Signe, who was indeed a teacher among many other things, was actually from Gouldtown, near what’s now Akeley and the New York state line. Olof Erickson was an early settler of the area, full of white pine, according to Ethel Young’s Stepping Stones article titled “Memories of Gouldtown,” which he among others cut down and “shipped to South Carolina” to be “used for masts for ships.”

According to Young’s article, a second school was built to replace the first in Gouldtown somewhere around 1902. Young writes that “this one-room school was used until 1930,” and that teachers who taught there included Signe and, to be assumed, her sister Irene. Young goes on to say that “Irene and Signe Erickson stayed in the Fred Thompson and Willis Hale homes, and both girls graduated in the class of 1916. Irene worked her way through Moody Bible Institute until the flu and pneumonia cut her life short. She died in Chicago in 1922.” Another missionary who passed away with Signe on Panay Island in 1943 was John Olson. He, too, graduated from the eighth grade (the highest year of schooling provided due to transportation needs that went unmet in rural Gouldtown) at Gouldtown and proceeded to work on his father’s farm. But, yearning for more education, his father is written to respond, “‘I won’t let the farm, here, hinder you. I’ll sell two cows and a horse and give you the money. After that, you will be on your own.'”

The later lives of the youth of Gouldtown are well remembered in the article, which says that, “Gouldtown young people appreciated an education and they had been taught to work and were not afraid of it. Three girls finished as registered nurses: Evelyn Erickson, Annette Erickson, and Florence Gustafson. Four girls became teachers: Jessie Herrick, Audrey Larson, Irene and Signe Erickson, and Florence Gustafson. Harry Erickson,” the article says, “became a civil engineer.” And, it says, “six boys became ministers: Glenn, Eugene, and Loye Donelson, Manley Erickson, John Olson, and Hugh Atkins. Two girls,” the article finishes, “became foreign missionaries: Florine Donelson to Africa and Signe Erickson to the Philippines.”

Young promises that “we will hear more about Signe later.”

And indeed we do.

In a section of the article titled “The Church,” Young writes that, “on September 10, 1923, Signe and Bertha Erickson, Marie Harrington, and John Olson all left together for Moody Bible Institute in Chicago to prepare their lives for Christian service.” All are written to have graduated from Moody, and it is here that another article, by Chris Gehrz, from bethelatwar.org, comes in handy.

Gehrz states that not only did Signe graduate from Moody, but she then graduated from Gordon College, and served churches “in Boston and Brooklyn before arriving in the Philippines in 1930. The following year she began her tenure at the Baptist Missionary Training school, teaching high school aged girls how to run Bible studies and Sunday School and to minister to women in rural villages.” Gehrz writes that Signe finished her master’s degree at Columbia University in 1941, and says that Signe said that “she and fellow teacher Dorothy Dowell resolved to ‘stay with the Filipinos unless their staying would endanger Filipino lives.'”

On Friday, June 1, 1945, the Warren Times-Mirror reported the death of Signe A. Erickson. It also states that she first went to the Philippines in 1930 “under the auspices of the Northern Baptist Convention and had only a couple of furloughs home in the years which followed. It was during one of those furloughs, Gehrz writes, that she studied at Bethel Seminary. In 1940,” the article states, and had a one year furlough in 1940, earning that masters in 1941. In April 1941, the Times-Mirror reports, Signe “returned to her island duties.”

It was 1930, actually, as Young writes that “Signe went to the Philippines as a missionary teacher for the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society.” She goes on to say that “enroute back to the West Visayan Islands, Signe stopped in Hawaii and had dinner with a friend and neighbor, Herbie Erickson. Herbie was the last of the home-folks to see Signe alive.” While Young states that she evaded the Japanese for two years, some of the Times-Mirror’s article fills in that gap.

“Those put to death,” as Signe and 11 other missionaries were on December 19 or 20 (the records conflict) of 1943, “had fled to a mountain refuge which they named Hopewell, in order to carry on their “preaching, teaching and healing mission” after the Japanese invasion”.

Hopewell was a refuge on Panay Island, about 360 miles southeast of Manila. The Times-Mirror goes on to say that “The (American Baptist Foreign Mission) society said that the missionaries had escaped the Japanese for two years but finally were betrayed by a captured Filipino guerrilla officer.” An account written by Mr. James Covell, a teacher in Athens, Pa. and Le Roy N.Y., and his wife, states, according to the Times-Mirror, that “we live in a grass hut with a bamboo floor. The people around us supply us with plenty to eat…The Japanese came very close one day in February, and we have moved out thrice to hide…”

In a sad turn of events, the War Department did not issue permission for the society to publish news of the executions on Panay until 1945.

But March of 1944, three months after she’d been beheaded with her missionary companions and written one year earlier, her parents had received a telegram that “stating that she was alive and well.”

It would be May 10, just two months after they received that letter, that they received the War Department’s telegram, which “stated simply that she had met her death at the hands of the Japanese on December 19, 1943.

Gehrz’s article says that in May of 1943 she’d smuggled a letter home, probably the one that her parents had received, that stated, “We have occasionally played hide-and seek with the Japanese. When it is safe we make occasional evangelistic visits to nearby barrios (town districts in Spanish-speaking countries). We have plenty to eat and still have clothes to wear, although some of us have gone barefooted during wet weather to save the one pair of shoes we still have.”

Scott Walker, a Baptist pastor who was raised a missionary’s child in the Philippines, wrote in his 2009 book “The Edge of Terror,” a brief “reconstruction” of the executions, as Gehrz’s article states:

“What is known is that the small band of Americans asked if they could meet alone for a time of prayer before the execution. At exactly 3 p.m. (conflicting with other reports that suggest the executions happened at dawn the morning after the Japanese discovered Hopevale and took the missionaries prisoner) they were summoned. Their final communal act was to boldly sing a hymn of faith as they walked back to the Japanese. The words and the tune do not now matter. Rather, it was the years of their lives spent caring for others that composed that sacred hymn, and their deaths formed its loudest crescendo.”

Gehrz’ article states that from 1946 to 1949, “Erickson’s home church in Warren, Pennsylvania endowed a $50 scholarship in her name.”

In the report of her death, the Warren Times-Mirror states that “while serving under the Northern Baptist group, she was affiliated with Calvary Baptist church of Warren and a memorial service was held there for her on June 9, 1944, following receipt of the news of her death.

“Besides her parents, she is survived by the following sisters and brothers: Mrs. J.M. Reichenbach, Olean, N.Y., Mrs. Laverne Erickson, Jamestown, N.Y., Milton Erickson, Duke Center, Manley Erickson, Rixford, and Emil Erickson, Warren.

According to Gehrz, Signe was forty-three years old when she died.