Dr. Harold F. Woodsworth was born in Portage la Prairie in 1883 and was a missionary in Japan for over 30 years. He received his B.A. from Victoria College in 1907. In the fall of 1908 he went to Japan as a missionary with the Y.M.C.A, teaching in the English department at a Japanese Government School in Nagasaki, then Kagoshima. In 1910 became a missionary under the Methodist Church, and returned to Canada for post-graduate work. In 1911, he married Miss Ada Frances Chown, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. F.A. Chown of Kingston. They returned to Japan together, first to a language school in Tokyo, then to Kobe, where Mr. Woodsworth became a professor of English at Kwansei Gakuin University, later becoming Dean of the Literature Department, and Dean of Theology of the University for a number of years. He was ordained during a furlough in 1918, during which time he also took his M.A. at Columbia University, New York. In 1936 he was honoured with a Doctor of Divinity from Victoria College. He died in 1939. H.F. Woodsworth's brother was C.C.F. leader J.S. Woodsworth. Their father, James Woodsworth, was a former Superintendent of Home Missions for the Methodist Church of Canada.
Ava Woodsworth (Chown), was a graduate of Whitby Ladies College and Queen’s University (1909). Mrs. Woodsworth taught English and the Bible in Japan. She was active on the National Council of the YWCA and the Dominion Board of the United Church Women's Missionary Society.
The Woodsworths had two sons, Kenneth, and David, and two daughters, Mary and Sylvia.