[ { "id": 210564, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "152\n\nFOUND IN A PENNSYLVANIA ATTIC –\n\nLetters from China 1903-1906*\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nWhile cleaning out his mother's attic in Bala Cynwyd, Harry V. Ryder Jr.' found a bunch of letters that had been sent from Taiho. Bala Cynwyd is an affluent suburb of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Taiho a river town in the northwestern corner of the interior province of Anhui in China.\n\n2\n\nThe letters were dated between January 1903 and April 1906. They were written to Harry's maternal grandmother, Louese Hedges Strawbridge, by Edith Rowe, who was a classmate at a \"finishing school” in Philadelphia. Both Louese and Edith were Baptists. Edith's letters reflected the high standard of private school education in eastern United States at that time. Her command of written English was more than respectable. Scenes and events were vividly described; ideas eloquently expressed; and grammar and spelling impeccable. Except for one or two words, her handwriting can be read without any difficulty. Two of the letters contain charming line-drawings, an old-fashioned practice still favoured by young students in American schools today.\n\nLouese Strawbridge was the only child of Samuel and Ann Hedges, who had come originally from Ohio. Samuel Hedges had served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. After the war he brought his wife to Philadelphia where he became a successful horse trader.3 Bala Cynwyd is near Devon, in the heart of the Pennsylvania horse country. After graduating from the Friends School, Louese went to a “finishing school\", then was married to George Strawbridge, scion of a family that had founded and operated the prestigious department store, Strawbridge and Clothier. Louese and George had four children. Catherine was born in 1896, Helen in 1900, Janet in 1903 and Benjamin in 1907. Except for Benjamin who died in\n\n* Lecture delivered to the Society on 6 October 1986. The author is grateful to Harry and Phyllis Ryder for making available the letters and for information on Harry's grandmother and her family.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210565, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 172, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "153\n\n1983, the others are alive and well in Philadelphia. Helen is the mother of Harry V. Ryder Jr., whose foray into the attic had led to the discovery of these letters from Edith Rowe.\n\nNothing is known about the Rowe family. Since they were able to send their daughter to a private school that involved payment of fees, the parents must have been at least comfortable. In her letters to Louese, Edith had not mentioned any brother or sister, but it was clear that she had carried on a regular correspondence with her mother. Edith's mother had enjoyed seeing the drawings that were scattered throughout her daughter's letters, much like travellers today sending home photographs they took.\n\nExplaining the reason for sending Louese the drawings, Edith wrote,\n\nIn lieu of a camera I tried to make these (drawings) pretty often in Mother's letters. They are very roughly done but they amuse Mother and so I venture to inflict them on my friends once in a while.*\n\n5\n\nVery little is known about Edith herself, except what can be gleaned from her letters. She had a teacher referred to in these letters as Miss Amy, and friends one of whom was named Florence. The fact that Edith had arrived in China in 1902 has been established by scanning missionary records. Louese was thirty-seven in 1909, therefore must have been born in or around 1872. As her classmate and contemporary, Edith must have been about the same age. This means that in 1902 Edith would be thirty. Being thirty and unmarried at that time probably had influenced her decision to become a missionary in China.\n\nAmerican women of Edith's educational and social background in 1900 were following the same kind of spirit of service that had led Jane Addams a decade or so earlier to found Hull House, a settlement house in the slums of Chicago. Whereas women at home were also championing such radical causes as the right to vote and abolition of alcoholic drinking, the more conservative ones, like Edith Rowe, were going abroad as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210568, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "156 \n\nWEI PEH T'I \n\nadopted, the Americans proceeded to exert their influence in China. It is not my intention here to suggest that Protestant missionaries in China were a part of the American scheme to wrestle for themselves a corner of the Chinese Empire. It remains true, nevertheless, that there was a surge in the number of American missionaries in China at that time, consisting of 8 to 12 percent of the total Protestant missionary force in 1900.12 \n\nAltogether seven letters were found in Mrs. Ryder's attic. Two were written in 1903, one each in 1904 and 1906, and three in 1905. It is unlikely that there were others because there appeared to be no break in the continuity of the content. Despite the small number, Edith Rowe was able to convey a great deal of information about Louise and herself, as well as life of the Chinese populace as observed by a foreign missionary in a small inland Chinese town at the beginning of the twentieth century. In addition, the letters reveal certain attitudes of foreigners in China; some were quite different from the espoused idealism that had brought them to China in the first place. \n\nThe first letter was written at Yangchow where Edith was receiving language training, together with eighteen other recruits. Most of these new missionaries were English, but there was at least one German woman. The stamps on the envelopes were in five and ten cent denominations issued by the Post Office of the Great Ch'ing Empire. Some of the envelopes carried two-cent American stamps, bearing the likeness of George Washington, with cancellation stamps indicating that they were sent from the U.S. post office in Shanghai. It was the practice of the Chinese Post Office at that time to charge recipients additional postage for letters that were considered to be overweight. On one occasion, Edith had refused to pay the postage due on a letter from Louise, and the letter had gone back to Wuhu before it was finally delivered to Edith at Taiho. Apparently, Louise had apologized in her letter for having caused Edith anxiety. Edith replied: \n\nPlease, you misunderstood my letter. I did not pay extra postage on your letter, but they charged me with it so I sent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210569, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "157\n\nthe letter back to Wuhu. I was explaining the delay in answering to you. Indeed your letters are worth the extra postage but I have never had to pay any on yours. This postage due system we have now takes a good many of the extra pennies and they are not always fair and square is why I sent your letter back.\n\nThe letters on the average took five to six weeks to travel between Taiho and Bala by land and sea not slow progress even by today's standard of speed. They went by way of Wuhu, Shanghai, San Francisco or Seattle, and Philadelphia. One letter went by way of Nagasaki; another by way of New York. It usually took overnight between Philadelphia and the post office at Bala. One envelope bore the cancellation stamps of both Shanghai in English and that of the French Concession of Shanghai in French. Another envelope showed that the post office at Bala had forgotten to change the date on the cancellation stamp, since it had the letter arriving at Bala before it was even sent out of Philadelphia.\n\nMissionaries of the China Inland Mission were to learn the Chinese language before they were sent to their assigned stations; then the local dialect as well since they were to live among the populace in the interior provinces. Their primary objective was \"to diffuse as quickly as possible a knowledge of the Gospel.\" Conversion to Christianity was not an essential part of their mission. In order to be as close to the populace as possible, lifestyle of the missionaries was \"to conform as nearly as possible to the social and living conditions of the Chinese\" around them. Until way after 1900, women missionaries of the China Inland Mission wore Chinese dresses. Edith Rowe's life at Taiho conformed to this pattern.\n\nImmediately after arrival in China, Edith went to the \"Yang-chow House\" of the mission to study Chinese. Her lessons continued at Taiho. Learning Chinese meant reading and writing the language as well as conversational Chinese. Commenting on a drawing she did of six Chinese men with pig-tails sitting on two benches listening to the Bible being read to them, Edith wrote that \"my teacher... has a very nice tail indeed,\" indicating that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210578, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "166\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\nother hand, Edith wrote three letters in 1905 — mostly because she had so much to complain about Mrs. Ferguson. Therefore, more likely than not, Edith had written after April 1906, but these letters had not been saved.\n\nWe do know that Louese had a new baby in 1907. With four children under ten years of age, even with a household of servants that Louese must have had, she would have found little time for letter writing. We also know that she became seriously ill shortly after the last child, her only son Benjamin, was born. The family today thinks that she had leukemia. At least it is thought to be a form of cancer. She was sick for a long time, and died in 1909, when she was only thirty-seven years old.\n\nNOTES\n\nHarry Ryder is serving as Commercial Counsellor at the United States Embassy in Kuwait. The Strawbridges were originally Quakers who had settled in Philadelphia, but the Ryders are Episcopalians.\n\n2 At first, the Ryder family had believed Edith to be a classmate of Louese at the Central Friends School. Correspondence with Clayton Faraday, Archivist of the school, however, reveals that Louese had been a member of the class of 1890, but there was no mention of her among the list of graduates. Edith Rowe is unknown at the school. Therefore, a conjecture must be made that they were most likely classmates at the \"finishing school\". Had they been academic scholars, they would probably have been sent to Bryn Mawr College. I am grateful to Mr. Faraday for his timely reply to my inquiry, making it possible to correct the error in my original presentation to the society.\n\n3 Colonel Hedges lived in an apartment attached to the Strawbridge house in Bala Cynwyd after his daughter's marriage. He survived both his wife and daughter. Harry Ryder remembers his great-grandfather, but never knew his grandmother.\n\n4 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n5 Protestant Missionary records. I am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for looking up this information. Hopefully there is more data on Edith in the archives of the China Inland Mission in London or Shanghai.\n\n6 Jane Hunter, The Gospel of Gentility, American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 13ff\n\n7 Hunter, 29-30.\n\n8 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905. As it turned out, one of Louese's grandchildren, Harry V. Ryder Jr., did join the Foreign Service, but it was the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210579, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 186, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "167\n\nState Department, not the missionary service in foreign lands Edith had in mind.\n\n* Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China. (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 384.\n\n10 Geography of China, (Shanghai: Commercial Press 1931).\n\n11 M. Searle Bates, \"The Theology of American Missionaries in China, 1900-1950\", in John K. Fairbank ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).\n\n12 Ibid.\n\n13 Rowe letter dated 19 January 1903. The German was Miss Trüdinger, who subsequently went with Edith to Taiho in March 1903 but left for points west to be married to her \"beloved\", another missionary in early 1904. Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n14 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n15 This was the letter that was mailed from Yangchow, dated 29 January 1903, which probably took a different route getting to Shanghai.\n\n16 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n17 Latourette, 386.\n\n18 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n19 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n20 Ibid.\n\n21 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905.\n\n22 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n23 Ibid.\n\n24 Ibid.\n\n25 Ibid.\n\n26 Ibid.\n\n27 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n28 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n29 Ibid.\n\n30 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n31 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905.\n\n32 Rowe letter dated 29 January 1903.\n\n33 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n34 Rowe letter dated 24 August 1905.\n\n35 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905.\n\n36 Ibid.\n\n37 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210580, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "168\n\n38 /hid\n\nWEI PEH T'I\n\n39 Rowe letter dated 29 January 1903.\n\n40 Rowe letter dated 17 February 1904.\n\n41 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n42 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n43 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1904.\n\n44 Rowe letter dated 24 August 1905.\n\n45 Ibid.\n\n46 Rowe letter dated 5 January 1905.\n\n47 Rowe letter dated 2 March 1905.\n\n48 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n49 Rowe letter dated 1 October 1903.\n\n50 Rowe letter dated 5 April 1906.\n\n51 Ibid.\n\n52 Ibid.\n\nAppendix: Letters from Edith Rowe to Louise Strawbridge (Mrs. George Strawbridge) of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania:\n\n(1)\n\nYangchow January 29-03\n\nMy dear Louise:\n\nIt was so kind and thoughtful of you to write to me here and send the book \"The First Christmas\". Both the letter and book came to me Christmas afternoon, so they had a double appreciation.\n\nMy hands are so cold today I cannot hold my pen very well. Our house here is very comfortable, but we have no fires except in the sitting room and dining room, so the thermometer ranges from 30 degrees to 40 degrees in my room. I enjoy it for our Chinese clothes are very warm. You would laugh if you could see me, so we did at each other when we first put them on. Would you be interested for me to describe what I have on? We wear foreign underclothes, but try to dress as much like the natives as possible.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210583, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 190, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "171\n\nso thankful for this place to get a start in it, and to learn some of the ways of the Chinese. But I start in to work in March when I go to my station, T'ai-ho, in the northern part of the Province of Anhui. I will be with Dr. and Mrs. Williams and Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm and Miss Trüdinger.\n\nI will be so glad to get started, although I cannot speak but the simplest sentences yet. My work partly will be with the children, which has already been begun in T'ai-ho. I can then write you a more interesting letter and will try to make the next one more legible.\n\nI send a great deal of love to Miss Amy. Will you also give my love to Florence and the others of our class as you see them. I trust this will find you well and the little one, if it has come. God has favored you Louese and I pray your little ones may give themselves to God as you have given them to Him, and may they be a joy to Him as they are to you, their earthly parents.\n\nGoodbye for the present\n\nAddress after April\n\nLovingly\n\nEDITH ROWE\n\ncare of China Inland Mission\n\nTaiho via Wuhu\n\nProv Anhuei\n\nChina\n\nIn the mean time just Shanghai, China c/o China Inland Mission, would reach me wherever I am. As I will be about a month on the journey in native boat.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 } ]