[
    {
        "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.",
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    {
        "id": 210573,
        "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": 180,
        "title": "RAS-1985",
        "content_text": "161\n\ninferior wife. I got over feeling badly about it, as it is quite right in their eyes, and much better than for me to be living alone, for then I would have a bad name.3\n\nLiving in such close proximity to married missionaries was fine, provided the people involved got along well. Edith liked the Malcolms, but she felt imposed upon by Mrs. Ferguson. The Fergusons, with three children and another on its way, came to Taiho in late 1904 to replace the Malcolms who went on extended home leave. On several occasions Edith complained about demands made on her as a single woman by Mrs. Ferguson.\n\nI am willing to spend and be spent for the people whom I came out to help, but I must confess I begrudge the time and strength spent for fellow missionaries, ... A single lady worker has a bad time living with a family as she is looked upon as general nurse and companion and seamstress.34\n\n35 but\n\nEdith felt that the Ferguson children were “dear and sweet” the nicest term she could find to describe their mother was \"very dependent\".36\n\nEdith worked with women and children at Taiho. She did not say very much about how she worked with the women in her letters, except that there were hints of meetings at the mission. She also called on the women at their home from time to time, but as very few women had leisure except during the Chinese New Year's, the women only visited the missionaries en masse on the first or second day of the year. Since Edith's letters were written to thank Louese for Christmas presents and to tell Louese what gifts she had sent to the Strawbridge children, Edith usually took pen in hand in January or February, the Chinese New Year season. The open houses, therefore, were top-most on her mind among the news she wished to tell her friend.\n\nThis has been a busy day, but nothing like yesterday. It is Chinese New Year and the people began coming before we had finished our breakfast, 7.30, and they kept it up all day. Some come to pay their respects and some say they do too,\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt",
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    {
        "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",
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    },
    {
        "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",
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]