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Idabelle Lewis Main was born December 15, 1887 at Blairstown, Iowa to Wilson Seely Lewis and Fanny McClung. She graduated from Morningside College in 1909 and was assigned by the Women's Society of Christian Services of the Methodist Church to teach at the Keene school in Tientsin, China. She returned in 1916 to Columbia Teachers College, New York.

She returned to Shanghai, China in 1919 to work for the Women's Society of Christian Service. In 1921 she was appointed president of the Hwanan College, Foochow, China. She held this position until 1926 when she returned to the Women's Society to serve as editor of the Mission paper.

In 1932 she married Reverend William A. Main and lived in China until 1941 when the Japanese invasion forced them to return to the United States where they bought a home in Mill Valley, California. In 1942 Dr. Main served as a minister of the Tamalpais Valley Community Church. After her husband's death in 1945 she returned to Foochow, China where she taught until 1949. She returned to Mill Valley and in 1950 accepted a position at Bennetts College in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a position she held until 1955. She lived in her family home until 1961 and then moved to the Robincroft Home for retired missionary women, where she lived until her death in 1969.