Lydia Mary Fay and the Episcopal Church Mission in Ian Welch

ydia Mary Fay was born in Bennington, Vermont, in and for the last year or two she was the only foreigner in the L1804 and died in Chefoo (today ) in house which she occupied.)”11 Province, North China, in October 1878.1 Her death followed Mary Fay focused her affections on her students, whom she a long series of age-related illnesses; from the mid-1860s she invariably referred to as her “young ladies” or her “boys.” She required extended breaks from her work in Shanghai, which seems to have had no close friendships with other women of the she spent either in her room at the mission school or in foreign kind experienced by, for example, the Anglican women missionar- sanatorium towns in China.2 ies of Fujian Province or Catholic women’s orders.12 Toward the Most of Mary Fay’s early life was spent in or within twenty end of her life she summed up her life’s work: “Teaching is my life miles of Albany, New York, but her education and wide reading and my delight.”13 It is worth reflecting on the balance between gave her a Eurocentric literary worldview.3 Her life story exem- “delight” and necessity when assessing missionary idealism.14 plifies people who find purpose for their lives (i.e., a vocation) Many teachers will identify with her fear of being forgotten by in a teaching career underpinned by strong religious faith, a her students. “I know [it] is the common lot of teachers, to spend combination that eventually took her to the mission field at the our lives, the best that we can give of our hearts and bodies for age of forty-six, this in an era when the average age of new mis- those who have as little thought or concern, and think every debt sionaries was about twenty-five. She had become a governess/ of gratitude is cancelled when our salaries are paid.”15 teacher in the 1820s, and by the time of her death she had worked with young people for over fifty years.4 She was a missionary Preparation for twenty-seven years when the average length of service by American Episcopal missionaries in China was around five years. Mary Fay’s initial employment in Virginia was as a governess Like so many people, she is at best a “shadowy figure in narra- with the prominent Episcopalian Dulany family near Alexandria, tions of religious and general history.”5 As an ancient Hebrew and she subsequently worked for the Carter family, with whom writer observed, “There are some who have no memorial, who the Dulanys were linked by marriage.16 Originally a Presbyte- have perished as though they had not lived; they have become rian, Mary Fay decided early in her stay in Virginia to become as though they had not been born” (Sir. 44:9 RSV). an Episcopalian. On July 12, 1840, she was confirmed by Bishop By the 1890s a majority of female English-speaking mis- William Channing Moore in Christ Church, Alexandria. She had sionaries were single women undertaking traditional “female” taken her first Anglican Communion on March 8, four months nurturing roles in education, health, and social welfare, while before her formal confirmation.17 An English minister, speaking men ran the ecclesiastical and mission administration at home at her memorial service in Shanghai, described her Episcopalian and abroad. Women found it almost impossible to overcome the identity in these terms: “If I were to try and say what type our “cult of domesticity,” which, for women such as Lydia Mary Fay, late friend bore, I should say that her character was moulded required home, husband, and family as evidence of a “normal” and fashioned in the Anglican pattern. Quiet, careful, reverent, female life.6 not caught up by passionate revivals and the gospel of hysterics, but equable and calm and thoughtful. . . . Her letters were full of Focus quotations from the older and more learned Divines.”18 Mary Fay’s pastor at Christ Church, Alexandria, was Missionary history has tended to overlook the personal lives Charles B. Dana (rector 1834–61).19 Her very deep feelings for him and deeper longings of missionaries, male or female, married were revealed in many letters but most dramatically in a letter or single.7 Mary Fay described her life as a “path of loneliness in October 1847.20 In that year, after about eight years of work as and lowliness of service.”8 At a function celebrating a quarter a governess in northern Virginia, she moved to Warrensburg, in of a century in China, Dr. John Macgowan, a contemporary, upstate New York, where an unchaperoned visit by Dana upset declared, “Her life is sacrificed not for father, mother, husband, her father.21 She had received six letters from Dr. Jefferson Minor friend, or even for her own people, but for a far off and ancient of Miller’s Tavern, Virginia, seeking her services for his Midway people.”9 The emotional and social isolation indicated by Mac- Female Academy, opened a year or so earlier, in 1845 or 1846, and gowan reflected her life in America and in China. Julia Emery some distance from Alexandria and Dana.22 Minor believed that reported that Mary Fay’s letters were written from a “lonely Mary Fay could provide the leadership the school needed, and room.”10 The missionary who knew her best was Robert Nelson, she finally accepted. It is obvious that she had nursed hopes of who observed that her prodigious appetite for learning was a marrying Charles Dana and that she decided to leave America product of “many a lonely hour of day and night. (For, during a when that door closed. large portion of her missionary life, she kept her solitary table; Midway Female Academy was a small private girls’ school near Miller’s Tavern, a village about thirteen miles from Tap- 23 Ian Welch, a former secondary school teacher, uni- pahannock, Virginia. The academy enrolled forty girls as versity lecturer, and senior public servant, worked boarders and day students, with at least two full-time teachers on Australian national curriculum programs. He is in addition to Mary Fay. In 1848 an advertising leaflet named now researching missionary history at the Australian Mary Fay as the principal, declaring that she is “so well and National University, Canberra. favorably known and has given such general satisfaction as to —[email protected] render comment or eulogy unnecessary.”24 Her only personal visitors at the school from 1847 to 1850 were the local Episcopal assistant minister (later rector) Henry Waring Latane Temple

January 2012 33 and his wife, from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Miller’s Tavern. revelation. But Oh! with tastes and feelings so perverted and Mary Fay wrote to Dana that “Mr. Temple’s sermons generally thrown away upon trifles how slow must such a work be, and put my mind out of frame” and that his services were dreary what patience, direction, discrimination, firmness and wisdom and “Methodistical.”25 Her social environment in Virginia was does it require in a teacher.”28 restricted, for the greater part, to relationships with parents, Jocelyn Murray might have been describing Mary Fay when some of whom openly rejected Christianity.26 Mary Fay was she wrote the following of potential female missionaries: “She not impressed with the almost pagan, hedonistic lifestyle of her should be ‘a sensible middle-aged person with strong decision “young ladies” but did succeed in transforming the school’s of character’; good health and good temper are ‘indispensible,’ religious character.27 A religious education program centered and she should of course be ‘devoutly religious.’ A lady who on an opening prayer and a “short Bible lesson each day.” It had been a governess would, if she had these attributes, ‘answer was no easy task to “persuade the young ladies to twist up extremely well.’”29 their curls, cut them off, put on plain dresses, lay aside their ornaments, and try and look and act a little more like school Devoted Service in China girls, and when they are composed enough for quiet, patient study, try to cultivate their taste for the really beautiful and When Mary Fay arrived in Shanghai in early 1851 there were true, their love of science and of truth, as it is in nature and forty boys in the Boys’ Boarding School, established a few years Noteworthy Announcing in Early African Pentecostalism,” the conference will bring “Commemorating the Past—Embracing the Future” is the together scholars working on three continents to examine theme for a daylong bicentennial missions celebration to be “transnational dimensions of the origin and life of Christ held February 6, 2012, at Tabernacle Church, Salem, Massa- Apostolic Church in both Nigeria and Ghana.” According to chusetts, and Park Street Church, , to honor Adoni- Dale T. Irvin, NYTS president and professor of world Chris- ram Judson and the seven other missionaries who traveled tianity, the conference will advance understanding of global with him in 1812 from Salem to Burma. Judson and his party Pentecostalism and transnational and diasporan African were commissioned by the American Board of Commission- church life. For details, contact [email protected]. ers for Foreign Missions. The program includes lectures by The American Society of Missiology (www.asmweb.org) Paul Borthwick (“Endurance Personified as Seen in the Life will hold its 2012 annual meeting June 15–17 at Techny Tow- of Adoniram Judson”), senior consultant for Development ers, Techny, Illinois, with the theme, “Prophetic Dialogue: Associates International, and Todd Johnson (“North Ameri- Practice and Theology.” Roger Schroeder, S.V.D., professor can Missions from the Judsons to Global Christianity”), of intercultural studies and ministry at Catholic Theological director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Union, Chicago, is ASM president. The deadline for propos- Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. The program con- als of papers for the meeting’s parallel-track sessions is Feb- cludes at Park Street Church with “Confessions at Midnight: ruary 1. E-mail a topic with an abstract (150–200 words) and The Story of Adoniram Judson,” a dramatic monologue by a brief biography to Robert J. Priest ([email protected]), profes- David Flynn, national director of Perspectives on the World sor of mission and intercultural studies, Trinity Evangelical Christian Movement, U.S. Center for World Mission, Pasa- Divinity School, and ASM second vice president. The Asso- dena, California. For details, go to www.crossgloballink.org/ ciation of Professors of Mission and the Academy for Evan- missionsbicentennial. Several other commemorations and gelism in Theological Education will conduct their annual seminars will be held in the Boston area February 5–20, end- meetings in tandem with ASM. ing with a “Harbor-Sending Reenactment” at Salem Harbor. The 2012 conference of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on Merged. CrossGlobal Link and The Mission Exchange, the History of the Missionary Movement and World Chris- by a resolution approved by their members, October 1, 2011, tianity will be held at the University of Edinburgh, June at the annual business meeting of both mission associations, 28–30. “Religious Movements of Renewal, Revival, and Revi- the final day of the North American Mission Leaders Confer- talization in the History of Missions and World Christianity” ence, in Scottsdale, Arizona. The merger forms a body rep- is the theme. For details and the call for papers, go to www resenting 35,000 evangelical missionaries deployed in every .library.yale.edu/div/yale_edinburgh/2012theme.htm. The country by more than 190 agencies and churches. Marv New- Yale-Edinburgh conference is cosponsored by the Centre for ell, executive director of CrossGlobal Link, and Steve Moore, the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edin- president and CEO of The Mission Exchange, stated that a burgh, Yale Divinity School, and the Overseas Ministries new name for the agency will be announced in February at Study Center. the bicentennial missions celebration reported in the previ- The European Association for South Asian Studies ous paragraph. (www.easas.org) is sponsoring “Christians, Cultural Interac- New York Theological Seminary (http://nyts.edu), tions, and South Asia’s Religious Traditions,” a panel at the Joseph Ayo Babalola University (www.jabu.edu.ng/z/), twenty-second European Conference on South Asian Studies, and the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in to be held at ISCTE–Lisbon University Institute, July 25–28, the Americas and the Caribbean (http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ 2012. Panel conveners Richard Fox Young, Princeton Theo- iradac) are sponsoring a conference on transnational for- logical Seminary ([email protected]), and Chad M. mations in early African Pentecostalism to be held January Bauman, Butler University ([email protected]), encour- 16–18, 2012, on the campus of Joseph Ayo Babalola Univer- age “intercultural studies scholars, mission studies scholars, sity in Ikeji Arakeji, Osun State, Nigeria. With the theme and religious studies scholars who address any of the many “The Wind Blows Where It Will: Transnational Formations phenomena associated with the historical emergence and

34 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 36, No. 1 earlier by Bishop William Jones Boone, the first Episcopalian (and August 25. Rose at 5 o’clock. At 6.30 o’clock rang the bell for the Anglican) bishop in China.30 As had been the case in Virginia, her boys to commence their usual morning studies in Chinese. Dis- tasks involved considerably more than classroom responsibilities: missed them at 7 o’clock. At 8.15 o’clock the Bishop conducted “I have been engaged in teaching various English branches, in the morning prayers of the school, at which I am always present a large boarding-school of Chinese boys, of which Mr. Points31 with the pupils. At 8.15 o’clock went with them again to their Chinese books. At 9 o’clock the Bishop visited and examined the is now the superintendent and teacher of the first class; but the Second Department, while I recorded the progress each pupil ‘maternal care’ of the school is divided between Miss Tenney and had made since his last visit, two weeks before. . . . myself; she has one half, and I the other, which accounts for the expression, ‘my boys,’ whom I have taught when they were well, September 6. After the usual morning duties were over and the nursed when they were sick—bought, and made, and mended pupils at their English lessons, went to my Chinese studies, their clothes (though in this I have the assistance of a tailor).”32 commenced the “Shoo-King,”34 or “Historical Classic.” . . . As it In another letter she wrote: “The exhausting routine of duties is is included in the course of studies pursued in our school, I am essentially the same all the year round. . . . I consider [this school] anxious to read it before the larger boys commence studying it, my family, and my greatest responsibility.”33 that I may better judge of their progress. . . . Her report to Bishop Boone covering the months of August to November 1854 describes a school routine set by the clock. September 25. Retired at 12 o’clock last night, and rose at 4 this

contemporary character of South Asian Christianities” to contributing editor, on September 1, 2011, with the annual submit proposals for papers. Marianist Award from the University of Dayton (Ohio). The award honors “a Roman Catholic whose work has made a Personalia major contribution to intellectual life.” The citation praised Appointed. Andrew F. Walls as research professor of world Sanneh’s “work on world Christianity, helping an age-old Christianity, Africa International University, on September tradition to understand and embrace its present, and to move 14, 2011, at the university’s campus in Karen, Nairobi, Kenya. confidently into the life and the future to which the Spirit is His installation address was “World Christianity: The Last inviting the Church.” Five Hundred Years.” Walls, an IBMR contributing editor, Died. Anthony Bellagamba, I.M.C., 84, Italian Catho- joined AIU’s Centre for World Christianity; he will guide lic missionary, educator, and administrator, August 11, 2011, Ph.D. students for the school’s Intercultural Studies pro- in Nairobi, Kenya. Educated in Italy and the United States, gram. For details, see worldchristianityaiu.wordpress.com. Bellagamba went to Kenya as a missionary in 1958; there he Appointed. Larry Miller, former general secretary of became professor of pastoral theology at the Catholic Uni- the Mennonite World Conference (www.mwc-cmm.org), versity of Eastern Africa in Nairobi and later was regional as secretary of the Global Christian Forum (www.globalchr vice-superior of Consolata missionaries in Kenya. In 1974 istianforum.org), as of January 1, 2012. The GCF, formed he was appointed the executive director of the United States in 1998, is an initiative that seeks to bring leaders of all Catholic Mission Council in Washington, D.C., which in 1981 Christian churches together to foster mutual respect and to became the U.S. Catholic Mission Association. In 1985 he address common challenges. The MWC Executive Commit- returned to Kenya, there serving as the first national direc- tee appointed César García of Bogotá, Colombia, as gener- tor of the Pontifical Missionary Societies. In 1993 he was al secretary to succeed Miller. He was chair of the Iglesias elected regional superior of the Consolata missionaries in Hermanos Menonitas de Colombia (the Mennonite Brethren North America. He then served as vice–general superior of Churches of Colombia) from 2002 to 2008, and he served as the Consolata missionaries in Rome from 1999 to 2005, when secretary of the MWC Mission Commission. he returned to Kenya. Appointed. Titus L. Presler as principal of Edwardes Died. Cecil Richard Rutt, 85, missionary, Korean stud- College, Peshawar, Pakistan, effective May 2011. Edwardes, ies pioneer, Anglican bishop, Roman Catholic priest, July an undergraduate and graduate institution affiliated with 27, 2011. Born in England, from 1954 Rutt served in Korea the Anglican Diocese of Peshawar, was started by the Church as an Anglican priest, for many years living alone in remote Mission Society. Formerly president of the Seminary of the rural villages. In 1966 he was appointed assistant bishop in Southwest, Austin, Texas (2002–5), and vice president of the Diocese of Daejeon, and two years later he became bish- General Theological Seminary, New York (2005–9), Presler op. In 1973, deciding that the time had come for Koreans to served as professor of mission and world Christianity at both take charge of their portion of the Anglican Communion, institutions. Raised in India, Presler was a missionary at Bon- Rutt offered his resignation. In 1974 he returned to England da in Zimbabwe in the 1980s. He is the author of Going Global and became suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Truro. Five with God: Reconciling Mission in a World of Difference (2010). years later he was named bishop of Leicester and, as such, in Honored. Dana L. Robert on September 21, 2011, at the 1985, was introduced into the House of Lords. Rutt retired in dedication of her endowed chair as the Truman Collins Pro- 1990 and moved to Falmouth, Cornwall. In 1994 he became fessor of World Christianity and History of Mission at Boston a Roman Catholic, and the following June he was ordained University School of Theology. Robert is an IBMR contrib- a Catholic priest. In 2009 he was made a prelate of honor by uting editor. Gerald H. Anderson, IBMR senior contributing Pope Benedict XVI, and he was an honorary canon of the editor and BUSTh class of 1955, chaired the alumni commit- Plymouth Cathedral of St. Mary and St. Boniface. A member tee for the celebration. of the Association of Korean Studies in Europe and the Brit- Honored. Lamin Sanneh, professor of missions and ish Association for Korean Studies, Rutt is coauthor of Korea: world Christianity, Yale Divinity School, and an IBMR A Historical and Cultural Dictionary (1999).

January 2012 35 morning. Have spent the whole day and evening (with the excep- From the outset of its work in China, the Episcopal Church tion of teaching two hours) in visiting and waiting upon the sick.35 pursued the American commitment to higher education as the best means of empowering individuals and inculcating ethical Mary Fay was on duty around the clock. The “domestic” tasks and social responsibility. Almost half of all American mission- of the boarding school were undertaken with efficiency—and a aries in China worked in higher education, and their emphasis complete lack of enthusiasm. She wrote: “I fear I have little voca- was on the educational reconstruction of China rather than the tion. It is still a dragging, wearying duty, and I am . . . willing conversion of individuals. American universities brought Western at any time to give it up to a more competent person, or to any learning to wealthier young Chinese and, perhaps unconsciously, one who may fancy the life of a missionary teacher is not one of laid a foundation for a challenge to China’s cultural tradition self-denial, self-discipline, and self-sacrifice.”36 and subsequently the role of foreigners in China, including mis- We get occasional glimpses of the curriculum, which included sionaries.41 One of the most famous universities was St. John’s in reading, spelling, writing, composition, geography, and theol- Shanghai, sponsored by the Protestant Episcopal Church.42 Mary ogy, together with Bible reading and translation into English.37 Fay was the key person in the Episcopal Boys’ Boarding School, Although St John’s University subsequently neglected Chinese which later became Duane Hall (1876), a foundational element language skills, they were taught systematically when Mary Fay of the later university.43 was in charge.38 This brief survey of Mary Fay’s life and work must mention the Linguistic Ability and Discipline reordering of gender outlooks during the nineteenth century as single women took active roles in missions parallel to those She proved to have exceptional skills in translating Chinese of men.44 In 1860, after a decade of playing “second fiddle” to written texts. As a proof of these qualities, Miss Fay is honorably males, Mary Fay indignantly resigned from the Boys’ Boarding mentioned by a celebrated Chinese author, in his book called in School because the bishop transferred the role of superinten- English “Pencil Sketches of Things Heard and Seen.” “She alone dent to a newly arrived and inexperienced male teacher; as of modern sinologues,” says the friend quoted above, “has been the bishop wrote, “I have always thought the school needs the thought worthy of notice by Chinese scholars.” Tsi-Wing, the strong hand of a male superintendent.”45 From 1860 and for Chinese writer, discourses of Miss Fay as follows: “I am told, seven years during the American Civil War, when funds from by a learned friend, that there is a foreign lady named Fay, who America dried up and the Episcopal Mission nearly collapsed, has a school in Hong Kew. She is of middle age, and unmarried, Mary Fay found work with the English Church Missionary yet with a face as fresh as a peach or an almond blossom, and a Society and preserved the Boys’ Boarding School by taking nature cold as ice, and pure as the falling snow. She loves Chinese the students with her into a school sponsored by the Church books, and has the Scholar Tsang Chu-Kwei for her teacher. She Missionary Society. Her leadership was in no doubt when she speaks Chinese, having mastered the tones and combinations returned, with “her boys,” to the Episcopal Mission in 1867.46 of sounds, daily increasing her knowledge by the study of the After twenty-five years, however, the humiliation had not eased. ‘Imperial Dictionary’ (Kanghi). Living thus, her pure nature and She wrote to Miss Julia Emery, the women’s secretary of the love of study supersede all family ties and joys. This is a woman Episcopal Mission, that an English clergyman said that “my to be reverenced. To this true lover of study, Lady Fay, praise can work seemed all granite . . . it seemed a man’s work done by a add no more.”39 Late in her life her Chinese reading skills were woman!”47 Just two years before her death, the Boys’ Boarding recognized when she was asked to edit the proof pages, with her School became Duane Hall, a theological training center; it was Chinese teacher Tsang Chu-Kwei, of Samuel Wells Williams’s said that Miss Fay “now hands over her school to the Mission Syllabic Dictionary.40 she has served so well.”48

Notes 1. The history of the Fay family in this article is indebted to the research well-being. On the autonomy and work of single women, see Ian of Linda Fay Kaufman, a family historian. Welch, “Women’s Work for Women” (2005), at http://anglicanhistory 2. This overview of Mary Fay’s contribution to Christian missions .org/asia/china/welch2005.pdf, which describes experiences of in China is part of a wider study on the history of the Protestant single women missionaries in Fujian Province, China, in the 1890s. Episcopal Church Mission in China and the Chung Hua Sheng Kung See also Carol Lasser, “‘Let us be sisters forever’: The Sororal Model Hui (the Holy Catholic Church in China, formed 1912), which in 1930 of Nineteenth-Century Female Friendship,” Signs 14, no. 1 (Autumn became an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. 1988): 160. 3. Her full name was Lydia Mary Fay, but she used Mary as her everyday 7. For a typical missionary hagiography, see Mrs. J. T. Gracey [Annie name. In mission archival material she is invariably referred to as Ryder Gracey], Eminent Missionary Women (New York: Eaton & Miss Fay. Mains, 1898). 4. Her fellow missionary Robert Nelson knew her when she first came to 8. Lydia Mary Fay to William Jones Boone, Spirit of Missions 24 Virginia and knew her own account of her early years and education (October 1859): 469. Spirit of Missions was published by the Domestic in Albany, N.Y. See Robert Nelson, “Letter,” Southern Churchman and Foreign Missions Committee of the Protestant Episcopal (Alexandria, Va.) 44, no. 48 (November 28, 1878). Church. Personal loneliness is a characteristic of single missionary 5. William R. Hutchinson, Errand to the World: American Protestant correspondence. A male Australian working with the China Inland Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1993), Mission, the largest Protestant mission in China, wrote of “a regular p. 2. struggle against the feeling of loneliness” (Frank Burden, Sunday, 6. See discussion of the American Baptist missionary Ida Pruitt in August 5, 1894, Papers of Frank R. Burden and Joanne Turner Marjorie King, “American Women’s Open Door to Chinese Women: Webster, 1887–1899, Mss, National Library of Australia). The subject Which Way Does It Open?” Women’s Studies International Forum 11, of missionary emotional isolation demands more attention. no. 4 (1999): 369–79. King highlights Pruitt’s mental and practical 9. J. MacGowan, “Address in Honor of Miss Fay on Inauguration of separation from the everyday Chinese, who represented, in cultural Duane Hall (Divinity School), Shanghai, November 8, 1876,” Spirit and physical terms, a continuing threat to her own and her family’s of Missions 42 (November 1877): 87.

36 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 36, No. 1 10. Julia A. Emery, “Miss Fay,” Spirit of Missions 44 (January 1879): 47. 30. The most comprehensive survey of Boone’s life is Muriel Boone, 11. Nelson, “Letter.” The Seed of the Church in China (: United Church Press, 12. See discussion of “sisterhood” friendship in Elsie Marshall, “For 1973). His Sake”: A Record of a Life Consecrated to God and Devoted to China 31. John T. Points was a schoolteacher from Staunton, Va. (see Charles (London: Religious Tract Society, 1903). See also Lasser, “Let us be Jones Boone, Annual Report to Foreign Missions Committee, sisters forever,” p. 162. February 13, 1849, in Foreign Committee of the Domestic and Foreign 13. Lydia Mary Fay, “The Chinese Teachers in Duane Hall,” Spirit of Missions Committee of the Protestant Episcopal Church, An Historical Missions 42 (March 1877): 165. Sketch of the China Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 14. For discussion of single women’s roles in early nineteenth-century U.S.A. [New York, Foreign Committee, 1885], p. 21). Points was one America and the light they shed on Fay’s dependence on Charles of several males, in China short-term, whose appointment over Mary Dana, discussed below, see Nancy F. Cott, “Young Women in the Fay angered her. Second Great Awakening in New England,” Feminist Studies 3, nos. 32. Lydia Mary Fay, “Journal, August 25–November 5, 1855,” Spirit of 1–2 (Autumn 1974): 15–29. Missions 21 (April 1855): 225. 15. Lydia Mary Fay to Mary Ann De Butts Dulany, from Midway 33. Lydia Rodman Church, “Life of Lydia Mary Fay,” in Gosley’s Book Academy, Essex County, Va., n.d. (Mss1 D3545 a 419–475, item 415, and Magazine 99 (December 1879): 594. De Butts Family, Papers 1784–1962, sec. 12, Virginia Historical Society, 34. The Shoo-King, later translated into English by Walter Gorn Old Richmond). under the title The Shu king; or, The Chinese Historical Classic (New 16. Ibid. See also Nelson, “Letter.” York: John Lane, 1904), compiled information on Chinese religion, 17. Fay’s confirmation is recorded at Christ Church (Episcopal) philosophy, customs, and government “from the earliest times.” Alexandria, Parish Register, 1828–1845, p. 61, and her first Anglican 35. Lydia Mary Fay, “Journal from August 25th to November 5th, 1855,” Communion is noted at p. 75 (courtesy of Julia Randle, Virginia Spirit of Missions 21 (April 1855): 225–26, 227, 231–32. Theological Seminary Library, Alexandria). 36. Lydia Mary Fay to William J. Boone, Shanghai, March 4, 1858, Spirit 18. Charles Henry Butcher, Church Missionary Society, Shanghai, Spirit of Missions 23 (July 1858): 339–42, 396–97. of Missions 44 (March 1879): 120. 37. Lydia Mary Fay, “Journal, July 29, 1857,” Spirit of Missions 22 (June 19. John Frank Waukechon, “Charles B. Dana and Virginia Evangelical 1857): 279. Episcopalianism: His Family, Career, and Sermons, 1810–1860” 38. J. Liggins, “Letter, September 1, 1857,” Spirit of Missions 23 (February (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Texas at Austin, 1992). 1858): 87–88. See also Edward Yihua Su, “Liberal Arts Education in 20. Lydia Mary Fay to Charles B. Dana, from Midway Academy, Octo- English and Campus Culture at St. John’s University,” in China’s ber 16, 1847; located in Dana (Charles Backus) Papers, 1802, 1820– Christian Colleges: Cross-Cultural Connections, 1900–1950, ed. Daniel 1881, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of H. Bays and Ellen Widmer (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, Texas; henceforth Fay to Dana, with location and date noted. 2009), pp. 107–24. 21. Ethan Allan Fay’s disapproval would have been greater still had he 39. Church, “Life of Lydia Mary Fay,” p. 594. known that his daughter was hoping to meet Dana, if only briefly, in 40. S. Wells Williams, A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language Washington before going to Midway Academy. She wrote to Dana, (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1874). “I shall have nothing to do but count the minutes or hours until I see 41. On the impact of the social gospel in China, see Jun Xing and you, and do for once call up your gallantry or kindness or compassion Chun Hsing, Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social and not keep a lady waiting too long” (Fay to Dana, from Albany, Gospel and the YMCA in China (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh Univ. Press, N.Y., September 27, 1847). 1996). 22. For a history of secondary education in neighboring counties, see 42. Xi Yuhua, “St John’s University, Shanghai, as an Evangelising Agency,” Russell Benjamin Gill, “Secondary Education in King and Queen Studies in World Christianity 12, no. 1 (2006): 23–49. County, Virginia, 1691–1938” (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Virginia, 1938); 43. MacGowan, “Address in Honor of Miss Fay,” Spirit of Missions 42 Gill states that the school operated until about 1855. (February 1877): 84. See Bays and Widmer, China’s Christian Colleges, 23. Mary Virginia Haile, Biography of an Old Country Church, St. Paul’s, and Arthur Lewis Rosenbaum, ed., Yenching University and Sino- 1838–1971 (Privately printed, 1971), pp. 5, 7. American Interactions, 1919–1952, special volume of the Journal of 24. Richmond Enquirer, December 25, 1849 (Virginia Historical Society). American–East Asia Relations (14 [March 2009]). See also “Duane Hall In personal correspondence, Lee Shepard of the Virginia Historical and Divinity School: A Quarter of a Century in China,” reprinted from Society suggests that Minor had previously run a tavern to augment Shanghai Evening Courier, November 9, 1876 (Ian Welch Collection). his income. See Shepard, A History of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 44. Jane Haggis, “‘A heart that has felt the love of God and longs for (Richmond: privately printed, 2001). others to know it’: Conventions of Gender, Tensions of Self, and 25. Fay to Dana, from Midway Academy, January 1, 1848. Henry Temple Constructions of Difference in Offering to Be a Lady Missionary,” and John McGuire, his predecessor and first rector at St. Paul’s, were Women’s History Review 7, no. 2 (1998): 172. in the Low Church Anglican tradition and were influenced by the 45. Lydia Mary Fay to W. J. Boone, Shanghai, June 13, 1860; W. J. Boone Second Great Awakening. to L. M. Fay, Shanghai, August 7, 1860 (both letters in Virginia 26. Ibid., April 1849. Historical Society). 27. Ibid., October 16, 1847. See Richard D. Shiels, “The Second Great 46. For an overview of the early 1850s through the eyes of one of the Awakening in Connecticut: Critique of the Traditional Interpreta- American missionaries, see Edward W. Syle, “American Mission tion,” Church History 49, no. 4 (December 1980): 401; Fay to Dana, in Shanghai,” Colonial Church Chronicle, and Missionary Journal 4 from Midway Academy, All Saints Day and Thanksgiving Day (July 1850): 20–25, repr. at http://anglicanhistory.org/asia/china/ [November 22], 1849 (Univ. of Louisiana Library, Special Collec- syle_shanghai1850.html. On her transfer to the Church Missionary tions); Fay to Dana, from Midway Academy, January 6, 1848, and Society, see Lydia Mary Fay, “Letter to Foreign Committee, Shanghai, May 26, 1848. January 8, 1862,” Spirit of Missions 27 (April 1862): 122; 27 (May 28. Fay to Dana, from Midway Academy, October 16, 1847. 1862): 149. 29. Jocelyn Murray, “Anglican and Protestant Missionary Societies in 47. Lydia Mary Fay to Julia A. Emery, from Shanghai, January 28, 1876, Great Britain: Their Use of Women as Missionaries from the Late Spirit of Missions 41 (August 1876): 422–24. Eighteenth to the Late Nineteenth Century,” Exchange 21, no. 1 (April 48. Charles Henry Butcher (Anglican Church), Opening of Duane Hall, 1992): 12. Spirit of Missions 42 (February 1877): 86.

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