Amoy Foreign Cemetery (Help!)

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
I received a very welcome e-mail from Ms. Marguerite L., with a couple photos of the Amoy Foreign Cemetery, which was on Gulangyu Islet, and had stones dating back to the 1600s. Sadly, in the 1950s, in protest against Britain's invasion of the Suez, the local Chinese buried the foreign cemetery. The beautiful sculptures were offered to anyone who would haul them off, for any purpose. Today, the locals regret it deeply, but the stones are beyond recovery (lest we be too indignant, remember that during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese destroyed their own heritage as well, so at least they were fair in their destruction! Besides, we foreigners did a good bit of destruction ourselves...)

Ms. Marguerite is looking for more information about the cemetery. I will send her what I have (inscriptions I've found in old letters and books, and a couple photos). I too would really appreciate any photos or info that you have. If you can help, please write! And below is Marguerite's letter....

Hello Dr. Bill,

I am doing some genealogy and was quite sad to find that the Amoy Cemetery had been destroyed in the1950's.

I'm sending along a photograph of my great grandfather Robert John Hastings Senior's headstone who was buried in Amoy. He resided in Anping, Formosa, starting around 1861, ran Wright & Co. in his later years. I think you may be able to glean more information for other people from the photograph of his headstone as other graves are quite visible. Do you know if anyone would have a record of who was buried in that cemetery?

My great grandmother, Yuna Huang Hastings (may) have been buried there in 1895 as well.

My other great grandfather was the first headmaster of the Diocesan Boys School and Orphanage in Hong Kong (c 1870's). He was also very involved with the Free Mason's in Hong Kong and (somewhere?) I have it recorded, he held positions in Amoy as well. His name was William Monarch Burnside Arthur. ]Note from Bill: our tiny Gulangyu Islet had two freemasonry chapters).

WMB's son Harry Walter Arthur, (my grandfather) worked for, then owned Bain & Co. he also stood in as the Vice Consul in Anping when needed. Harry and the rest of the Arthur, Hastings family immigrated to Vancouver Island, Canada in 1912. Where I now reside in Victoria.

If you have any information in regards to the cemetery or where I could email to receive information I would greatly appreciate it.

I do know that my forefathers used to go to Amoy quite often. Something that is precious to me is a small amount of lace edging that was passed on to me, the lace is bundled and pinned with the price and marked Amoy. Just as if it had been purchased yesterday!

Another thing that was passed to me was a book 'Sketches from Formosa' written by the Rev. William Campbell who was a dear family friend of the Hastings' and the Arthur's. This book has given me much insight into what life was like in those very early days. Hundreds of photographs were taken by my family of their days in China so I have an extensive visual collection, which makes me very grateful.

When I was a child of course Amoy and Anping were such distant, exotic places, and here I am now traveling in seconds with my fingers!

Thank you for reading my rather rambling email. I do hope you may be able to offer me some information and look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Marguerite

Read more about the Cemetery in "Discover Gulangyu"

www.amoymagic.com