THE LAMBUTHS Courtesy Kwansei Gakuin, Photo: Photo: General Commission on Archives and History Photo: General Commission on Archives and History

Mary Isabella McClellan Lambuth The Lambuth families, , Japan, 1889. The older couple Bishop Walter Russell Lambuth in the center is James and Mary. Behind Mary is Walter and to the left is his wife, Daisy. The man in uniform next to Walter is his younger brother, Robert, whose wife is on the right. The couple standing on the left is Walter’s sister, Nora and her husband, Dr. William Park.

Missionary Family Dynasty

Few families have contributed more energy and Walter Russell Lambuth, the son of J.W. and Mary personnel to global Christian mission than the Isabella, was born in , coming to the United Lambuths of Madison County, . Five States for study and receiving degrees in theology generations of missionaries went out from 1800, and medicine. He married Daisy Kelley, whose when Francis Asbury sent William Lambuth to work parents were missionaries in China. In 1885, the among Native Americans, into the 1950s with the mission board of the MECS reassigned both Lambuth service of Margarita Lambuth Sherertz, his great families in China to open work in Japan. Walter great granddaughter and her husband, in Russell would found Kwansei Gakuin School, now and China. a major university, and his mother started what is William’s son, John Russell, also served among today Hiroshima Jogakuin. Native Americans and the Creoles of bayou Walter would return to the to lead country, and planted the family in the Pearl River the MECS mission agency, be elected a bishop and Church and community of Madison Country. His plant churches in South America, Africa, , son, James William (J.W.), a physician, was raised , Manchuria and Cuba, among other locations. in Mississippi but he and his wife, Mary Isabella His sister, Nora Lambuth Park, and her husband, Dr. McClellan, a teacher from New York, spent most W.H. Park, were missionaries in China. Their daughter of their lives in China and Japan, setting sail in was Margarita, who married Dwight L. Sherertz, and 1854 for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. the couple served in both China and Africa. Two of James William’s brothers were pastors in The Lambuth family church in Pearl River was Mississippi. declared a United Methodist Heritage Landmark by the 2016 General Conference.