Vol 4. No. 3 Spring 1986 Editor: Dr

ISSN 0141-658 8 , f' VoL 4. No. 3 Spring 1986 Editor: Dr. Rosie Uewe tlvn-Jones ' THE FINK FAMILY f.lRITISH ASSOCIATIONFOR CEMETERIESIN S OUTH ASIA (BACSA) This year marks the first decade of BACSA and its newsletter Chowki PRESIDENT CHAJRMJ'\N dar has been going almost as long. Members often tell us how they Sir John Cotton, KCNG. OBE Mr. H.M. Stokes enjoy browsing through back numbers and recently Mrs. Crystal Brown, doing just that, made an interesting discovery which she wrote to us COUNCIL :EXECUTIVECOMMITTEE aoout. In 1982 Chowkidar published two photographs of the Chittagong Mr. B.C. t31oomfield Mr. LO . Bell OBE Cemetery, Bangladesh which was currently undergoing restoration. Mr. V.L Oavies 0B£ Mr. J .S. Hewitt They showed general views of the area with foliage cut back and one Sir John Lawrence Bt. -OBE Miss S.M. Fardngton picture has a pair of small, urn-topped memorials sharing a common Mrs. l<.l. LewisCUE, MA, FSA Major A.G. Harfield, .SEM, fRHistS base. 'There seemed something vaguely familiar' wrote Mrs. Brown Sir Hugh Maday-TaHack Mr. E. A. Johnston 'and as I stared at it, memory stirred and it suddenly came to me Sir Cyril Pickard, KCMG Mrs. C. Langdon-Davies Mr. R.N. Lines MBE ~hat the twin graves weren't just any old graves, but those of spec Th~ Rt. Hon. Peter Rees .• QC. MP ral relevance to me. With mounting interest I looked through some Mr. M.G. Satow. OEE R.-s. P. Mccandlish The:R t . Hon. the Viscount S1im OOE Mr. R.fL Nagor old photograph albums of the years we had spent in Chittagong when lieut. Gen. Sir John \filrs"ley. KB£,CB ,MC Mr. M.H. Rossington, CBE my husband Len was a senior official of the Chittagong Port Trust. Mrs. P. Saul There it was - an almost identical photograph of the graves - those Mr. C.E.D. Walker, MBE of Sarah Elizabeth Lydia and Mary Catharine, daughters of the Rev. J.C. Fink.' Mrs. Brown's photographs were ta ken about 1961 and she H6NOAARYSECRETARY HONORARYTREASURER has others of the Fink family graves from the same cemetery.(see p.47) Mr. T.C. Wilkinson Mr. ,l. fL G. Cornyn What gives her story a special interest is that she is the great 76~ Cbar.tfield Avenue great-grand-daughter of the Rev. J.C. Fink, a missionary, and her dis London SWl 5 6HQ covery of the tombs had been made by mere chance, the family previous Mr. and Mrs. Brown copied the in NERSEi'RSHIPSECRHARY & FAMILYHISTORY OFFICEn ly hav i ng been unaware of them. !JEPUlY TREASURER scriptions on the family tombs and have now passed them on to BACSA --- - --- - -- M:iss L de Bourbel !~BE to help in the identification process. The story of the Rev. J.C. Mrs. 'Rosemarie\HHdnson Fink is a remarkable study of a dedicated man who devoted himself selflessly, for nearly half his life as a Baptist missionary, to a PRESS & PUBLICITYOFFICER group of native peoples, despite tremendous personal sacrifice. When Mr. J. Wall the independent kingdom of Arakan was conquered by the Burmans in 1783, many Arakanese fled north and took refuge in the districts of Chittagong and Tripura. These fugitives became known as Mughs or IUMS OF BACSA Moghs, the origin of the name being obscure. The Serampore Mission established by the famous Baptist Missionary triumvirate William Car n,i s A:ssociat ion was for:med in October 1976 to br ing together peop1e 1,ith ey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward, had a station at Chittagong to a concern for the many hundredsof Euro_p.ean cemeteries, is·olate d graves minister to these e xi les, and in 1820, stirred by an appeal for some and monumentsin South Asia. There is a steadily grm·iingmembership of 011era thousand, drawn from a wide circle of interest - Gover.nment; one to take up the vacancy caused by the sudden death of the Super Churches· Serv'ices; Business; .Museums; Histor-ical a.nd Genealogical.-Soc intendent of that Mission, Fink volunteered for service and early in ietjes, ~tc. Moremembers are needed to supp6r.t ·the ra.pidly expa~ding . 1821 he and his wife Mary Cytano were on their way to Chittagong. The activities of the Associati on - the setting up of local Branches 1n India. account of his missionary work up and down the Chittagong district Pakistan. Bangladesh, Sunna, Ceylon, Malaysia etc., the building up of and Arakan coast is most interesting. a Record file in the India Office library and Records; and manyother projects for the preservat ion of hist orical and architectural monuments. John and Mary's lives were most eventful, very arduous under the most primitive conditions and often fraught with danger. They coped with The annual subscription rate is £2 with an enrolm~nt fee of ~8. There a~e the upbringing of 13 children in difficult circumstances. Except for sp"l3cial rates for joint membership (husband and w1fe), for li fe membership and ·f,or associate membership. Fun detai l s obtainable from the Secretary. Sarah and Mary who died early in a typhoid epidemic, the remaining daughters and 6 sons managed somehow to receive a good if erratic ed Editor: Rosie Ue11ellyn;Jones 135 BurntwoodLane, LondonS\·J 17 ucation, for the sons rose to high positions and the daughters married well. Crystal Brown's own great-grand-father Robert Archibald Fink became Assistant Accountant General of Bengal. The Rev. John Christ opher Fink was Dutch by birth. His father, Dirk Vink left his native 38 Amsterdam as a young sailor bound for the Far East and he eve ntually came to the i sland of Ternate, one of the Moluc ca islands i n what was been murdered. He tended the wounded and then brought them, together then t he Dutch East I ndies. He was appointed Commandant of t hat is with the still surviving Stewart children and the bodies of the_ma~ land in about 1784 and ma r ried Wilhe l mina Jansen, daughter of an Am tyred missionaries, down to F~och~w'. The Rev. _Hu~hStowell Ph~llips sterdam merchant. J ohn (o r Johanne as he would have been called) was spent thirty -eight years of his life as a CMSmissionary, and his the fifth child. When h is parents died, John escaped from his elder grandson has been able to flesh out the bare bones of his adventurous brother's guardianship to the i sland of Amboyna where he was be friend life. ed by a n old friend of his father's, D r. Babington, who owned an apothecary's sho p. The kindly physician took John i nto his ho me and Born i n Manchester on 14 September 1866, he attended the Grammar apprenticed him to himself. Two year s later a friend visiting fr om School there Corpus Christi College, Camb r idge and Ridly Hall. On Bat avia in Java, Dr. Hodgson, impressed with the lad, asked to be his ordinati~n in 1888 he went out straightaway to Nang-Wa-Kau in allowed to continue John's medi cal training. John became Dr. Hodg China. By 1 891 he was moved into the Kienning District, with the son's assistant in the General Hospital, Batavia, and later on joined late Dr. Rigg and ne xt yea r married Minn~e Mary A~person of_th~ church a Dutch corps which had been retained by the British when they occu of England Zenana Missionary Society. L~fe for pioneer Christian pied Java. As assistant apothecary John saw active service during missionaries in Chi na was far from easy in those early days . Oppo several British military actions in Sumatra and Java and was se verely sition to their presence arose , and the landlord of thei r rented wounded during one of these e xpeditions. When he returned to Batavia house was beaten and e xhibited in a c age. The young coupl e them i n 1814, then only 18 years old, he resolved to learn English and selves we re only rescued from the mob by the local Mandarin. Tw~ . began attending the Sunday morning services being conducted by the children were born of the marriage, the elde r , Robert Stowell Phillips re cently arrived Rev. William Robinson of th e Serampore Baptist M i s being the fathe r of our co rrespondent. Sadly Minnie Ph~llips d~ed in sio n. As his understanding of English increased, he became more an d 1894 and was bur ied in Shanghai, a book subsequently being published more impressed by the Gospel message and he decided to gi ve up his about her short but courageous life. military career and devote himself to missi onary work. The Rev. Phillips later remarried - another mi ssionary, Alice Maud Armed with a letter of introduction to t he great missionar y of Seram Hankin, whose family had long connec t ions with India and the East, pore, Dr. Carey, John left Java in 1816 as me dical assistant a board her g reat-grandfather being Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, the a vessel returning to Calcutta with a detachment of His Majesty's first Metropolitan Bishop of India. After retirement from the CMS 78th Regt. On 3 January 1817 'The Cyrus' anchored off Fort Willliam Hugh Phillips was appointed Warden of St. Catherine's Deaconesses' and that same evening John was introduced to Dr. Carey. A few day s House, Canterbury and later Cura t e-in -Charge of St.

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