Ch 3-2: Future Missionary Childhoods
Graham House in Walla Walla, WA
The wood frame house built by William Graham, David Crockett Graham's father, in Walla Walla, Washington, c.1890.
The families that raised future missionaries were often members of the rural middle class, being second or third generation settlers that had achieved a degree of financial and social stability. However, life histories reveal more diversity in these backgrounds than we find in other factors, such as education and funnel institution membership.
Very few missionaries came from the poorest of the poor, who were often excluded from the middle-class mainstream churches. Some were upwardly mobile strivers, such as William Smith (1939, 3-5), who recalled spending days harrowing potatoes for twenty-five cents a day at the age of eleven in order to help his widowed mother support the family, but who later went on to open a successful general store with his brothers (who also sponsored his studies at a Christian boarding school):
In potato planting, hoeing, and digging seasons, the Smith children could not go to school, for they were required in the fields. I was only eight years old when a bachelor neighbor farmer sought my services with his potatoes. He allowed me to drive an old team harrowing, and paid me twenty five cents for a twelve hour day, dinner and supper included.
My brother John, a good companion who was in charge of the farm, received a very severe wound on his knee when threshing. He was unable to drive the working team again that autumn. This left the twelve year old boy [Smith] to do the entire fall plowing on a hilly, stony farm. Those long days following endless furrows still stand out in my mind. The vicious kicks from the handles of the plow when it struck underground stones strained my arms in their very sockets and knocked the breath from my body, which was at that time small for my age. I would stumble home from the field at eight o'clock, care for the horses, then drop asleep on the straw in the stable.
Others were only a generation removed from hard labour, such as Kathleen Spooner, whose father had made the jump from rural proletariat (five of his ten siblings died in childhood, and the family moved constantly without ever acquiring a permanent home) to comparative respectability as a high-school teacher.
Formal Portrait of David Crockett Graham's Natal Family, 1889
A precious family portrait of the Graham family before they suffered the loss of David's mother, and three brothers. From left to right front row: William Edward Graham, Joseph Clarke Graham, David Crockett Graham, Elizabeth Atchley Graham. Back row: Mary Louisa Graham, Louis Israel Graham. It is not clear why David's closest sister, Elmira, is not in the photo.
David Crockett Graham’s upbringing similarly reveals a pattern of escalating tragedies. His parents were farmers in Arkansas when his mother contracted tuberculosis. For her health, they sold the farm and moved west to Oregon where a flood ruined all their crops and their stock died of Rinderpest. After moving to another farm near Walla Walla, WA, his mother and younger brother died, and his older brother was kicked to death by the father of a local bully. David’s father lost his court case against this man, and was reduced to a wage labor job to support David and his sister through high school. While in school, David also worked as a wage laborer on farms and at other odd jobs. Graham credits his success as a missionary in part to the hardships he endured as a child (Graham n/d Autobiography).
A few West China missionaries came from prominent urban families, such as Earl Willmott, whose grandfather had founded the School of Dentistry at the University of Toronto, and served as the first president of the Canadian Dentistry Association. Earl’s father was a professor of dentistry at the University of Toronto. His mother came from a highly educated family of Methodist preachers and was influential in the Methodist Ladies Missionary Society.
Earl’s wife, Mary Katharine Geyer, also came from an educated and prominent family of professionals. Her grandfather, George Dodds, owned a large monument company for which her grandmother drew the engraving work. Her father had attended Boston Theological Seminary and become an ordained minister, while her mother had attended nursing college and obtained a postgraduate degree. However, Kay’s father died when she was small. Her mother moved back to her parental home to raise her three children. She then became the Dean of Students at Ohio Wesleyan University, while also serving leadership roles in the YWCA and being active in the foreign missionary movement.
Many well-to-do Ontario families partook of the burgeoning outdoors tourist industry, which helped to spark their interest in a life of adventure. The Willmotts had a cottage at “Go Home Bay” on Georgian Bay, where the elite faculty and administrators of the University of Toronto had an enclave of private resorts. There Earl and his sister "Evie" enjoyed sailing, canoeing, swimming, fishing, and tennis, as well as stimulating artistic and intellectual programs (https://gohomebay.org/welcome/). The rustic beauty of the Canadian shield translated readily to that of his future cottage at Mt. Emei, dubbed “Faerymorn.”
A Man Canoeing on the Algoma River
A photo taken during E Kyle Simpson's fishing trip in Algoma District, before 1910
E. Kyle Simpson grew up in Howard Township, Kent County, Ontario, a small town near the north shore of Lake Ontario. In an undated letter to his children (c.1940s or 1950s), Kyle described his family as prosperous farmers:
I was brought up on a large farm for its day - 250 acres, 150 was good land - 100 was pasture and bush... We raised horses to do the farm work and sold a team about every year ($200-$300). We raised cattle for beef and left enough cows to supply the table with dairy products. Outside the sale of pigs, cattle and horses, the only other income was eggs, potatoes, white beans and wheat (corn and oats were fed to the horses, cattle and pigs)... My mother died of cancer when she was 56 and I was 13 years old... My year round job was to feed and care for the calves. There was no 4H clubs, but I grew some good grade calves... I walked four miles to high school and carried my lunch. No school lunches in those days!
Sometime between 1904 and 1920, Kyle's family vacationed in the Algoma region where the men of the family fished and canoed on the rivers. Photographs of this event take up one of the two pages of photos of their life before China that his wife, Alice Estabrook Simpson, included in her China album. These images’ prominence underscores the importance of these experiences to preparing Kyle for the missionary lifestyle.
Still others came from small-town elites, such as Mary Austin (later Mary Endicott), daughter of the mayor of affluent Chatham, Ontario. Her daughter Shirley Endicott (2003, 13) describes her mother’s upbringing as follows:
Her home was a large custom-built turreted mansion on the banks of the placid Thames River that ran through Chatham, Ontario. Her father, Charles Austin, owned the largest department store in Kent County. When Mary was 13, he was elected mayor. The Austin’s were the first family in town to own an automobile. At age 15, taking a year off from school, Mary accompanied her family on a three month trip to Europe, visiting museums and art galleries and staying in fine hotels.
Endicott House at WCUU, c1910
The house in which Jim Endicott Jr. grew up on the WCUU campus during the early years of its development.
This background did not well prepare Mary for a life as a West China missionary, and she had many occasions of struggle and doubt throughout her missionary career. It did not help that her husband was among the 4.5 percent of West China missionaries who grew up in West China. His father, James Endicott Sr., served in Chengdu between 1893-1910. Jim Jr. was thereby accustomed to Chinese language and customs, and found it easy and enjoyable to live and work in Chongqing, where he and Mary lived across the river at “Duckling Pond” from 1926 to 1941.
About ten percent of West China missionaries grew up in West China, other parts of China, and other Asian countries, as the children of missionaries. Dr Ralph Outerbridge grew up in Japan, the son of missionaries Rev Dr Howard and Edna Outerbridge. As a boy he became fluent in the Japanese language. Before he left Japan to attend the University of Toronto, a friend of his father gave him a Japanese sword. When he discovered decades later it had belonged to a famous leader in the Meiji Restoration period, he returned it to the Japanese in an official ceremony at the past owner's hometown. This decorum and respect for the symbolic value of the sword reflected what his wife, Margaret (in Munro 1990, 97) called the "Oriental aspect of Ralph's character." In China, this same quality enabled him to navigate complex social conflicts without anyone "losing face."
Ralph Outerbridge's and Jim Endicott's examples show that the best preparation for becoming a West China missionary was to come from a family of missionaries in Asia. Conversely, growing up in a missionary family inspired many "mish kids" to become missionaries themselves. Yet, outdoor life working on a farm and/or wilderness vacationing also served to prepare future missionaries for their lives in West China, while a purely urban middle class upbringing could leave future missionaries under-prepared for their lifestyle in China.