In Memoriam--Mrs. Frank P. Joseland

Bill Brown ..The Amoy Mission.
by Sadler, Rev. J., in Chinese Recorder, Vol. 40, 1909, pp. 45-46

OUR beloved friend and fellow-worker, Mrs. Frank P. Joseland, has been translated to the higher service. We are bowed in spirit for the stricken husband and children, as well as for ourselves, our schools, the Chinese Christians and for all who knew her kindness and care.

The loss is deeply felt both in Amoy and Chiang-chiu and in the districts inland. Mrs. Joseland has been connected with the L. M. S. for twenty years. She has proved a valued teacher, wife, mother, and friend. Her experience of human life was considerable, and she knew how to say the "word in season" to those who were in trouble.

Coming from a well-known ministerial family in England (her father being a Congregational minister for long years, still hale and hearty at seventy-eight years of age), and having received a valuable training in the Milton Congregational College for Girls at Gravesend, she was eminently fitted to do good service in teaching. She improved her powers and endeared herself to the schools of boys, girls, and women, where she regularly taught. Her efforts were carried on even in spite of physical suffering and with much self-denial.

She was born forty-five years ago at Barnard Castle in Durham, when her father was minister there, and lived at Haverill, Honiton, and Devizes, at which places her father had pastoral charge. She was married to Mr. Joseland in the Union Church, Hongkong, by the Rev. G. H. Bondfield, in November, 1888, and so has had just twenty years of married life and mutual service with her husband, with two furloughs in the home land.

So far as the L. M. S. in Amoy itself was concerned, Mrs. Joseland was the only married lady in the Mission, and was thus the more valued, especially as she was given to hospitality- and exercised a gracious influence over those who needed a friend. Hence her loss will be most keenly felt. Her elder brother, the Rev. C. E. Darwent, M.A., of the Union Church, Shanghai, is famous as an example of the ability of the family. To him, also, the news of his sister's early death is truly bitter. There are four children—two elder boys, nineteen and seventeen years old, and two other children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of eight, at home at school. All these have now the burden of being motherless to bear, while yet young. May God give them the needed strength to endure.

The saddest and most tragic feature of the unexpected loss was the fact that the afflicted husband was travelling in a distant part of the very extensive inland region under his charge, where neither letters nor messengers could reach him in time. Thus our brother, who left his wife in good health in October, returned at the end of November to her not only dead, but buried.

The illness began with dysentery on November 8th, but it yielded to remedies, and nothing was feared till the 20th, when more serious symptoms intervened, and Mrs. Joseland passed peacefully away on Tuesday, November 24th. She was buried the day after in the Community Cemetery on Kulangsu, followed to the grave by the largest number of people, both foreigners and Chinese, ever seen at a funeral in Amoy. A number of foreign gentlemen carried the coffin from the Mortuary Chapel to the grave. The Rev. J. Macgowan read the service in English, and the Rev. J. Sadler addressed the Chinese assembled and offered prayer. Suitable hymns were sung in both languages, ''Jesus, Lover of my Soul", and ''There is a Happy Land". Thus, amidst grief and pain, the note of Resurrection Joy was struck, and our hearts followed our sainted sister to her heaventy home.

Her work lives after her, and the memory of her gracious, kindly presence is enshrined in the hearts of hundreds of those who knew her. For to know^ her was to love her. "She, being dead, yet speaketh."

Other Joseland Pages
Frank Joseland Describes Amoy Area

Inquiries about Joselands

The Amoy Mission Project

www.amoymagic.com

Talmage Memorial by Kip

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
From Chinese Recorder, Vol. 23, November, 1892, pp. 530...
In Memoriam--A Veteran Gone Home
by Leonard W. Kip of the Amoy Mission

When Dr. Talmage, three years ago, bade good-by to the friends at Amoy, he was also taking leave of the place where so many years of his useful life had been passed. It is forty-five years ago last August since he landed for the first time in Amoy. That was the day of small things.

The converts might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Thus it was that he bore his share, and a large part it was, in the building up of the Church, from the early beginning to the present organized Churches represented in the Tai-hoey, or native Presbytery.

While he loved preaching, into which he threw himself with all his heart and soul, he also greatly enjoyed work in his study. By this he prepared to do a great and lasting work in the instruction and training of preachers and pastors for the growing needs of the Church. When the time came, 30 years ago, to organize a native Presbytery, he took a prominent part in this preparatory step towards the ordaining and installing two native pastors over the 1st and 2nd Churches of Amoy.

The native Christians always found in him a sympathizing and kind helper, and responded by an ever increasing respect and love. Nor was this feeling confined to the natives, bat shared in by his fellow missionaries, as well as the foreign community.

Some may remember him as present at the first missionary conference at Shanghai in 1877. The general esteem in which he was held was testified by choosing him as one of the presiding officers. In this position he contributed much to the successful carrying on of the conference.

As years passed by, and his strength began to fail, he gradually left the care of the country work to the junior members of the mission. This allowed him to devote himself more carefully to theological instruction and literary work. So it came to pass that he was unknown by face to the more distant Churches.
Ten years ago he made a tour of these at the Chinese New Year season. He travelled by easy stages and met the different Churches on appointed days.

Everywhere he created a profound impression by his venerable appearance and his instruction and earnest words to the brethren and sisters w ho bad gathered to see and hear him. Since then he has never been forgotten by these Churches. Enquiries as to his condition were constantly made up to the present time, when all heard with sorrow that he had been taken away. Many inquiries were also made as to whether he would again return to China, but we have been compelled to give a discouraging answer. It was evident that his work in China was done, but not /or China. For sometime before he left, he had been engaged on a dictionary of the characters in the Chinese Bible, with the character sound and meaning given in the Romanized Colloquial.

After his return to his native country he continued to revise and perfect it, while he had strength to do so. But at last the pen was laid down. Now there only remained the waiting for the end of his earthly life and the beginning of the better life above.

And so he passed away, just as he had completed his 73rd year, on Friday,
Aug. 19th, 1892.

Thirty-one years ago he welcomed me to his Chinese home. I may be permitted to look back on those years of brotherly intercourse and communion with emotions of pleasure, as well as gratitude to God, who has so graciously given me so kind and helpful a fellow-laborer. And it is fitting that one who has so long companied with him should write these few and imperfect words of memorial.

His will be an honored name in the Chinese Church History that is yet to be written. A better memorial still will be the Church, whose foundation he helped to lay on the one foundation—Jesus Christ. He lived to see the little one become a thousand. But what is this in comparison to the Church of Jesus that is yet to fill the land. To help in this work were his best efforts given, and so he will assuredly join in the song of rejoicing in heaven and on earth, when this whole region shall have turned from idols to serve the living and true God.

Leonard W. Kip. October, 15, 1892.

www.amoymagic.com

China, AncientTeacher

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
Just came across this insightful piece by John Nevius in the Chinese Recorder (Vol. 23, Nov. 1892), about why China, the ancient Teacher, had such a hard time becoming a pupil.

China a Teacher. -- From time immemorial China has been the recognized teacher of all the nations around her and the pupil of none. She may well be excused for claiming a respect which for centuries all her neighbors have accorded to her. In this respect she stands in striking contrast to Japan. Japan is accustomed to take the place of learner, having largely derived her literary culture and even her language from China. This accounts for the rapidity with which she has received foreign ideas and institutions. China would fain continue in the belief that there is no knowledge worth knowing which she does not already possess. This vis inertia which resists change and progress, is all the greater, because her immense population is, and has been for ages, homogeneous in race and culture. It is not strange that China clings tenaciously to institutions which have stood the test of millenniums and given to her such a marvelous degree of national prosperity. Can we wonder that she listens with suspicion to any suggestion of change, especially that she should regard with apprehension a new teaching confessedly exclusive and revolutionary? Serious as the obstacles above presented are, it should be added, by way of encouragement, that the Chinese are by no means unimpressible. They are as enthusiastic as any race to receive truth when apprehended. In fact, there are as many Christians in China at the present time as in Japan, and probably as many more who are heartily in favor of adopting Western sciences and arts. The fact that Japan is undergoing a rapid and complete transformation, while China as a whole is yet unmoved, though due partly, no doubt, to difference of race, is to be referred, I believe, principally to the tenfold resistance of a tenfold greater population, and also to the peculiar historical precedents and traditions alluded to above.
Dr. John L. Nevius. Chinese Recorder, Vol. 23, Nov. 1892, Pp. 513,514

www.amoymagic.com

John Lloyd--Unsung Father of Amoy Dictionary

Bill Brown ... Amoy Mission
Although Carstairs Douglas is famous for his Amoy Dictionary (Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy),he wrote in his preface that he based it on the manuscript of Rev. John Lloyd, of the American Presbyterian Mission of Amoy. Little is known of Lloyd, other than that he came to Xiamen in December, 1844, and died here just four years later, on December 5th, 1848. But it was Lloyd's brief two years of labor that made possible much of the work that followed. Douglas wrote in the Dictionary preface, "When I arrived at Amoy in 1855 I copied it for iny own use, adding the additional words in Doty's Manual,* and have been constantly enlarging and re-arranging the collection of words and phrases ever since [14 years!] A few years after copying Lloyd's Vocabulary I collated the manuscript dictionary written by the Rev. Alexander Stronach of the London Missionary Society...."

On the 6th of December Rev. John Lloyd, of the American Presbyterian mission, died of typhus fever after an illness of two weeks. Mr. Talmage makes this record of him:

"Dec. 8, 1848. Rev. John Lloyd was born in the State of Pennsylvania on the first of Oct., 1813, which made him thirty-five years, two months, and five days at the time of his death. He was a man of fine abilities. His mind was well stored with useful knowledge and was well disciplined. He was most laborious in study, very careful to improve his time. He was mastering the language with rapidity. His vocabulary was not so large as that of some of the other brethren, but he had a very large number of words and phrases at his command, and was pronounced by the Chinese to speak the language more accurately than any other foreigner in the place. They even said of him that it could not be inferred simply from his voice, unless his face was seen, that he was a foreigner. He was a man of warm heart, very strong in his friendship, very kind in his disposition, and a universal favorite among the Chinese. I never knew a man that improved more by close intimacy. His modesty, which may be called his great fault, was such that it was necessary to become well acquainted with him before he could be properly appreciated. But it has pleased the Master of the harvest to call him from the field just as he became fully qualified to be an efficient laborer. What a lesson this, that we must not overestimate our importance in the work to which God has called us. He can do without us. It seems necessary that He should give the Church lesson upon lesson that she may not forget her dependence upon Him."

American Presbyterian Board of Amoy
* Doty: Arrived in Amoy in 1844, had two wives die here, and died within 4 days of reaching shore when he returned to the U.S. in 1864 to visit his family. Read the Memoirs of Mary Doty,his daughter, who was born here in Gulangyu in 1851 and lived here until 1859.
www.amoymagic.com

Frank Joseland Describes Amoy Area

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
“A word about the country reached from the “door” of Amoy may not be amiss, as some people seem to fancy china is one great flat plain. I venture to call the Fokien province, the “Wales” or “Scotland” of China, so diversified is it as to natural scenery. Mountains several thousand feet high are found all over the province with fertile valleys in between, well watered by good rivers. In most parts the soil is rich, yielding good crops of rice, barley, wheat, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, tobacco, as well as great varieties of vegetables. Fruit trees abound­oranges, limes, bananas, plantains, pineapples, pumaloes, mangoes, loquats, carambolas, and many other kinds with local names that have no counterpart in English. Forests of pine and fir are found on the hills; the wide-spreading banyan and the elegant bamboo on the plains among the towns and villages. Coal and iron are met with as well as many other precious metals, but this store of Heaven-provided gifts is only very partially worked owing to the firm hold that superstition has upon the people. Tea, paper, lumber, articles made from bamboo, are the principal products....
Joseland, Rev. Frank P. , in Gaunt, 1899

Gaunt, Rev. L.H., Ed., “The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, Vol. VIII – No. 85 New Series,” London, 1899

www.amoymagic.com

Frank & Annie Joseland -- Amoy Congregational Union

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
Re: Frank and Annie Joseland, Amoy Mission (if you have info on them, or old photos of Amoy, please share them with us!).

Letter from R. Dixon (response follows):
March 7, 2008: Hi Dr Bill, My great great grandfather was a missionary in Amoy for about 20 years, (I think he left in 1901). Have you ever heard of the Congregational Union? I thought that your website may have some info on his work, but couldnt find anything. I was planning a trip to Amoy this year to trace the past, but there just isnt any info available! My great great grandmother died there also, but I believe that the grave site was destroyed by the Chinese in a protest of some kind in the 1930's. Any info you have about the Congregational Union would be much appreciated. His name was Rev. Frank P Joseland. Kind Regards R. Dixon.

My response:
Hi Robbie,

So nice to hear from you! Sorry that I don't have anything about Joseland yet. I do this in my spare time, and it is slow going. Only a few days ago I received some photos from a Russian Orthodox Priest in Hong Kong. Amazing what all went on here.

I will ad more info when I can, but in the meantime... the Congregational Union was formed about 1870 from a dozen churches or so of the London Missionary Society in the Amoy Mission. There are numerous accounts of this, though not much that I've found directly about the Joselands. Read about the Union in Philip Wilson Pitcher's "In and About Amoy." Also see The Chronicles of the London Missionary Society, 1901, which has Frank Joseland's article, "The Amoy Congregational Union." The 1902 issue has an article about the Amoy Congregational Union, by Una Long, of the Van Riebeeck Society

Frank is also mentioned in The Chronicle of the London Missionary Society, 1896, and 1903. "Christian Faith and Life" (1906) has more information on this.

Also try, "A Century of Protestant Missions in China (1807-1907) for info on the Union (though none on Frank, I think).

I know that there are numerous mentions of Frank Joseland (and his wife Annie) in the "Chinese Recorder," which you can find probably in a library there? There are a few dozen references to Frank and Annie Joseland in Kathleen Lodwick 's Index of the Chinese Recorder. And David Cheung, in "Christianity in Modern China," references Frank's article about the Amoy work," (I'd love to have a copy of it if you ever come across it!).

Kenneth Scott Latourette's "A History of Christian Missions in China" mentions briefly the Union.

Since I'm in China, I do not have access to these. I'd love to have a digital copy of the Chinese Recorder. Someday...

If you have any information about them that you could share, and that I could upload (especially old photos of the Joselands, and Amoy), I'd really appreciate it. The more we have online, and that people share, the more likely others can find what they're looking for as well, and contribute to preserving the Amoy Mission's rich legacy.

Best wishes with your research.

Bill

REPLY to my E-mail:

Hi,

I found some more basic information:

Ordained Sep 14 1887 at Congregational Church, Angel St., Worcester
Sailed Oct 31 1887 and arrived at Amoy Jan 5 1888
Married Nov 7 1888 at Union Church Hong Kong, Annie Lucy Darwent, Church member of Congregational Church Devizes who sailed to England Sep 22 1888
In 1891 he removed to Chiang Chiu taking the place of Mr Ross
Mrs Joseland died at Amoy Nov 24 1908
Dec 1913 Mr Joseland retired, leaving Amoy and settled in Melbourne Australia

I found a lot of info located at the School of Oriental and African Studies library in London - a lot of articles he wrote, and what looks like a book: Ting-Chiu : the story of a Chinese "forward movement" / by Frank P. Joseland, of the London Mission, Amoy, South China. Unfortunately I have not been able to locate in Australia yet. I'll keep looking around in Australia. Would there be anything in Xiamen Universities library?

Answer: no! There is almost nothing in Xiamen about any of this; everything was destroyed by Japanese, Cultural Revolution, etc. That's why I have to get everything from abroad.... So, again, if anyone out there has information and photos they can share, I'd really appreciate it . And read more at the Amoy Mission pages:

http://www.amoymagic.com/Amoymission1.htm
www.amoymagic.com