~ Medical Nurse Missionary to Africa - Belgian Congo
~ Member of the Wytheville Presbyterian Church

Janette Forestier Fontaine was born on September 12, 1886 in Wythe County, Virginia to Clement R. and Mary Strange Fontaine. Janette joined the Wytheville Presbyterian Church on August 25, 1900 with the Reverend T. P. Barclay was serving as Minister. She was called into the mission field in 1912 Presbyterian Mission School Teacher & Cook in Grundy, Virginia and Teacher & Cook of Lumber Camp Children as part of a Presbyterian Home Missions Project. She became a Registered Nurse at Johns-Hopkins in 1921 and on August 15, 1923 was Appointed as a medical missionary on the World Missions Field of the Presbyterian Church, U.S. to Africa - Belgian Congo at the Edna Kellersberger Hospital (currently called the Bibanga Hospital). She served until March 15, 1932 when ill-health would not allow her to continue. In a 1972 Bio, she recalled "that the hospital had about 500 patients and that served as superintendent over about six or eight native medical boys. She and two other ladies were the only nurses in the hospital. Her day started at 8 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m. with no electricity available. Joint church services were held on Sunday in the Bibanga native church, which was a frame church with a grass roof. All whites and natives attended the services together, with missionaries doing the preaching."
"Miss Janet remembered the first roads as being only trails but later native boys were employed in the construction of roads. This signaled the arrival of transportation in the form of motorcycles and she remembered riding on the back of a motorcycle with Dr. Kellersberger to a camp where about 500 people were afflicted with sleeping sickness. Later with the arrival of automobiles, she remembers the natives scattering in all directions at the sight of such a contraption!"
Perhaps indicative of changing times was the fact that "Miss Janet" arriving in Bibanga in a hammock carried by native boys and that she was able to leave in an automobile.
Janet died in 1974 was laid to rest in East End Cemetery.