Re: China (was Re: Methodists and Presbyterians)

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

>I'd like more of this personal things about the people of Midway.

>Myrtle J. Longcoy

The contents of the list is provided by the list members,
so the best way to encourage things you'd like to see is
to post some of them.

Meanwhile, here are a few more notes about the Midway missionaries
to China of the middle of the 19th century.

Rev. Richard Quarterman Way and Susan Caroline Quarterman had one child
born in Singapore and five children born in China.  There are pictures
of two of them on page 138 in the book: Charles Frances Way and
Georgia Serena Way.

Those two Midway missionaries (arrived 1843) and Rev. John Winn Quarterman
(arrived 1846) all served in Ningpo, China, which is south of Shanghai.
The first couple were apparently among the earliest Presbyterian missionaries
there, since the church web pages say the first one was Walter M. Lowrie
in 1842.
 http://www.pcusa.org/pcusa/today/features/feat9711d.htm

Lowrie died there at the age of 28.  He and his wife were thrown overboard
by river pirates in 1847.
 http://www.ptsem.edu/read/inspire/6.1/feature_1/history_of_exchange.htm

Lowrie kept a detailed diary which was published by his father as a book:
Memoirs of the Rev. Walter M. Lowrie, Missionary to China.
Edited by His Father   New York: Carter, 1850.  Cloth octavo; viii,
504 pages.

Such a diary one would think would include some mention of other
missionaries.  Copies are available for sale, if somebody wants
to buy one and see.

Ningpo was one of five open ports, Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Ningpo,
and Amoy, gained by Britain in 1842 in the Treaty of Nanking that
ended the Opium War.

The Opium War started in 1839 when China objected to foreign powers,
especially Britain, importing opium into China.  This importation
caused a drug problem unlike any we see today; China was a nation
of addicts, going to opium parlors everywhere.

The response of the foreign powers was to invade China and force
concessions, including the five open ports and the importation of
missionaries.

Rev. John Winn Quarterman died at Ningpo, China of smallpox in 1857.
Richard Quarterman Way and Susan Caroline Quarterman returned from
Ningpo in 1858.

The period they were all there was one of the most turbulent in
Chinese history.  Tens of millions of people died of famine, disease,
and warfare.  The greatest rebellion in modern Chinese history, the
Taiping rebellion, broke out during this period.  It was led by
Hong Xiuquan, who considered himself to be the younger brother of Jesus
and appointed by God to implement the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
(Taiping tien-quo) on earth with himself as king.  He proceeded to try
to do this by armed force, from 1851 to 1864.

 http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taiping.html

Why did the Midway missionaries die and leave in 1857 and 1858?
Probably because of this:

``The "Lorcha War" (also sometimes called the Second Opium War) ran
from 1856-58. It began over the "mistreatment" of a British flag on
a Chinese junk, or a "lorcha." It officially ended with the 1858
Treaty of Tientsin.''

 http://www.ex.ac.uk/Projects/meia/Archive/1857-China/

The first cousins Mary Leila Winn and Rev. Henry Holmes Winn appear
to have been a second wave of Midway missionaries who went to China.
He was born in 1840, and she presumably some time around 1868 or later.
So he was unlikely to have arrived there before around 1865, and she
probably not before 1890, unless perhaps she attached herself to his
mission to go earlier.  He died in Hong Kong in 1890.  We don't know
what happened to her.

These missionaries were all Presbyterians, so there may be some
mention of them among records of Presbyterian missionaries.

There's also a book about Alabama missionaries to China, and Mar
Leila Winn's parents died in Alabama, so maybe it might say something
about her.

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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