Life and letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D., missionary, diplomatist, Sinologue /

Chapter I. 1812-1833

PAGE

The family of Williams in America — William Williams of Utica — Sophia Williams — Birth and boyhood of Samuel Wells Williams — Early influences — Schools — He attends the Rensselaer Institute at Troy — Proposal from the American Board to go to China as missionary printer — He completes the course at Troy — Prepares as printer in Utica — Sails from New York in the Morrison . . i

Chapter II. 1833-1837

Canton and the factories before the Opium War — Relations with the mandarins — Difficulties in the way of mission work — Ebjah C. Bridgman — The Chinese Repository — Missionary occupations — Death of Robert Morrison — Withdrawal of the East India Company— Dr. Parker and the beginning of hospital work — Mr. Olyphant— Mission press removed to Macao — Life in Macao — Tractgiving with G. T. Lay — Death of Edwin Stevens — The Morrison's trip to Japan — Her repulse and return — The Japanese sailors . 54

Chapter III. 1837-1845

Commissioner Lin and the opium — The “ Chinese Chrestomathy ” — Rev. S. R. Brown and the Morrison Education Society — Trouble in Canton — The Opium War — Difficulties of foreign residence —

The war ended and ports opened to foreigners — The “ Easy Lessons in Chinese ” — “ English and Chinese Vocabulary’’ — “Commercial Guide ” — Caleb Cushing and the treaty of Wanghia — Efforts to raise a Chinese metallic type fund — Mr. Williams leaves China — The journey through India and Egypt — Palestine — Italy and Paris — London — Movable Oriental types — Arrival in New York ....... .... loi

iii

IV

CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. 1845-1852

PAGE

Lectures for the type fund — Mr. Williams settles in New York and compiles “The Middle Kingdom” — His engagement — Life in New York — Marriage — “ The Middle Kingdom ” published — He obtains the degree of LL.D. — Sails for China with his wife — The Term controversy — Literary work — Private and public life —

“ Tonic Dictionary” commenced — Death of William Williams —

The Chinese Repository concluded — Life and occupations in Canton ........... 146

Chapter V. 1852-1854

Arrival of Com. Perry’s expedition in China — Mr. Williams engaged as interpreter — The expedition reaches Lewchew — Napa — The Bonin Islands — The squadron in Yedo Bay — Meeting at Gorihama — Perry returns to winter at Macao — The Tai-ping insurrection — Illness and work — Preparations for the second expedition to Japan. 183

Chapter VI. 1854-1855

Journal of the expedition — Lewchew again — The ships in the Bay of Yedo — A treaty proposed — Negotiations — Japanese timidity — Perry’s conduct — Visit to Hakodadi — Simoda — Reflections on the expedition — Return to Lewchew and China — Commodore Perry’s letters to Mr. Williams — The Perry medal ..... 206

Chapter VII. ' 1855-1858

Appointment as United States Secretary and Interpreter in China — Mr. Williams’ reluctance to accept — The “Tonic Dictionary” completed— The second war with China — The mission press destroyed with the factories — Resignation sent to the American Board — W.

B. Reed, United States Minister Plenipotentiary — War opens with Yeh's capture — Mr. Williams’ family sent to America . . 234

Chapter VIII. 1858-1859

The Allies at the Peiho — Negotiations with Tan — Capture of the Taku Forts — The foreigners at Tientsin — Kweiliang and Hwashana —

CONTENTS.

V

Treaty-making — Kiying — The Toleration Clause — The treaty signed — The Americans return to Shanghai — The Legation visits Nagasaki — Death of Olyphant — Scenes in Shanghai — Tariff treaty arranged — Mr. Reed’s departure ..... 254

Chapter IX

Second expedition to the Peiho — Repulse of the English at Taku —

The Americans at Pehtang — They are escorted to Peking — The audience discussed — Entertainments — Death of Aitcheson — Return of the Legation to Shanghai — The coolie trade — Return to America ........... 297

Chapter X. 1860-1867

Sentiments regarding the war — China again — Death of Walworth ; of Dr. Bridgman — The “Commercial Guide” rewritten — To Peking with Mr. Burlingame — Scenes in Peking — Diplomatic and missionary interests — Mr. Williams brings his family to Peking — Living in the capital — Letter in defence of missions — The cooperative policy — Letter on a mission to Kiukiang — Building a United States Legation — Botany about Peking — A trip to Mongolia— Mr. Burlingame’s mission to the treaty powers . . . 327

Chapter XI. 1868-1876

Letters from Peking — Family sent home again — A medal from the king of Sweden — Mr. Burlingame’s death — Wm. H. Seward in Peking — The dictionary finished — Mr. Williams superintends its printing in Shanghai — A third visit in Yedo Bay — Return with family to Peking — The “Syllabic Dictionary” published — Audience with the Emperor — Through Europe to America again — He returns to Peking and resigns — Farewell to Peking — Testimonials from missionaries and friends ....... 373

Chapter XII. 1877-1884

At home in New Haven — The professorship of Chinese in Yale College— Persecution of Chinese in America — Essay on Chinese immigration— Petition to President Hayes — The great famine of

VI

CONTENTS.

1878 — Paper on the Term question — Rewriting “ The Middle Kingdom ” — Death of Mrs. Williams — American Bible Society presidency — American Oriental Society elect Mr. Williams president— Compliments from Professor Ko of Plarvard — Accident and illness — The revised “ Middle Kingdom ” — Death — Reminiscences and characteristics . . . . . . .421

INDEX 483

LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS.

Chapter I

The American branch of that numerous family from which the subject of this biography descended, was founded by Robert Williams, a Puritan probably of Welsh origin, who emigrated from Norwich, England, in 1637, and became one of the earliest settlers and leaders in the town of Roxbury, now a suburb of Boston. Two facts may be recorded of him : one, that he lived to his hundredth year ; the second, that he became the ancestor of more ministers — and more long-lived ministers — than probably any other man in this country. An oft-told legend of the family relates that while he was urging his timid and reluctant wife to endure with him the hardships of a passage to the new country, she had a dream foreshadowing that from her loins should come aline of pious and illustrious preachers, whose sturdy voices should sound the truth to millions in that land. “ I cheerfully prepare,” she said, “for the journey to such a glorious future ” ; and though the day of fulfilment began after her death, she being dead has spoken loudly to posterity from scores

I and hundreds of pulpits, and transmitted something, perhaps, of her goodness and dignity to thousands who bear her name.

To his youngest son, Stephen, the centenarian left the more valuable part of his estates ; “ nor would I have the others think hardly of me for so doing ” — he observes apologetically in his will, — “ for he lives under the same roof with me, and thereby hath been more helpful and comfortable unto me than the other sons have.” It is not recorded that any other member of the family attained to the extraordinary age of its founder, but the heritage of long life seems to have remained with his progeny through many successive generations. The offspring of the favored son Stephen continued to occupy the ancestral farm until the fifth and sixth remove from Robert of Roxbury, a line of godly and upright men and women, who maintained the name with honor and respectability, but appear never to have reached positions of great distinction or command.

In the year 1780, Thomas and Ezekiel, two brothers of the fifth generation, established a tannery in Framingham, Mass., where, for ten years, they struggled in vain, against the exhaustion following the Revolutionary war, to make their business a profitable one. Disaster at length fell upon them ; they were compelled to make what peace they could with their creditors, and in 1790 they emigrated to the settlement of New Hartford, in Whitestown, N. Y. Here they recommenced the business of tanning, and at the end of a few years of untiring industry and economy, succeeded in saving enough to return to Massachusetts and pay off their debts. The spectacle of

DR. S. WELLS WILLLAMS.

this resolute twain plodding through winter snows, in order to satisfy to the utmost farthing the last of their creditors in Framingham, is of itself sufficient to confirm their honest as well as direct Puritan descent, the spirit of whose moral code they were doggedly determined to preserve. After this we are not surprised to learn that these brothers were both eminent for piety, deacons in the church, and charitable to the extreme limit of their means.

Deacon Thomas Williams, the elder of the two brothers, brought four children from Massachusetts, the youngest of whom, William, was baptized and usually known among his contemporaries as Billy Williams. He was, when a boy, apprenticed to Wm. McLean, of New Hartford, the pioneer of printing in Central New York; about the year 1800 he joined the printing establishment of Asahel Seward (who afterwards married an elder sister) , and upon coming of age young Williams entered with him into a partnership under the firm name of Seward & Williams. The energy and ability of both these men were such as to make their business a profitable one, and their house soon became the most important publishing concern and book-store west of Albany. The character of the works issued from their press savors of the time : N. Webster’s Spelling Book, the sole right of which in Western New York was most advantageous to the firm ; “ Watts’ Divine Songs,” with Doddridge’s “ Principles of Christian Religion”; Murray’s “ English Reader” ; an abundance of school books and primers ; nine or ten stereotyped editions of the New Testament. The presence of Thomas Hastings in the village afforded Mr. Williams not only his warm friendship, but the valuable copyright of his “Musica Sacra” and his “Spiritual Songs,” both commanding large sales. A more ambitious undertaking was the reprinting of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, in connection with a Philadelphia publisher. Lack of means retarded the enterprise, which seventy years ago was at best a precarious venture for the United States, and at the end of twenty years from its commencement, after the death or disappearance of most of the subscribers, the last volume of the encyclopedia appeared simultaneously with the downfall of its allied publishers. This catastrophe occurred some years after the withdrawal of Mr. Seward, who, in 1824, left his brother-in-law to carry on the business under the latter’s name. Mr. Williams, who curiously enough was an indefatigable anti-mason, while his partner was a member of the village lodge, became in 1830 publisher of the Elucidator, a paper designed to counteract the increasing influence of masonic organizations. As newspaper publisher he had previously engaged in issuing the Utica Patriot and its successors the Patriot and Patrol, and the Utica Sentinel, down to the year 1824. But his newspapers were pecuniarily less profitable than his other enterprises, and brought him eventually into a lawsuit.

Mr. Williams obtained the title of colonel during the war of 1812, his stern sense of patriotism holding it to be the duty of every citizen to volunteer in time of danger. “ In February, 1813,” writes Thurlow Weed, who was at that period an apprentice in his printing-office, “ when an attack on Sackett’s Harbor was threatened and expected, and volunteers were called for, Mr. Williams was the first and most active man in Utica in raising a company. So prompt indeed were his movements that in thirty hours

DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS.

after the requisition was received, we were on our way in sleighs for the Harbor. Then when the danger seemed imminent men did not cavil about rank. Col. Seward, of New Hartford, self-raised to a captaincy, took command of our company, while Mr. Williams, who held the rank of major, acted as sergeant. And here, as in a subsequent campaign, when he was on the lines in the staff of Gen. Collins, Col. Williams was highly valued as a soldier, as he was through life esteemed as a citizen.” Identified in one way or another with nearly every new movement in the village, Col. Williams occupied in the community the position of one whose well-known energy and experience were called upon as a matter of course in any undertaking accounted a public enterprise. In this relation his name naturally appears as first among the list of chief engineers in the fire company of Utica at the time of its reorganization in 1828. To protect its four hundred buildings, the village had, as early as 1805, purchased a fire-pump and apparatus, manned by some dozen men and attached by lines of bucket-men (and women) to the town pump or the river at times of conflagration. A score of years later this organization developed into a volunteer fire department, and in 1831 it had increased to six companies; among the members of “ Engine No. 4 ” we find the names of Col. Williams (who withdrew from the post of engineer in 1830), and of his two eldest sons. Wells and Dwight. While not a man of strong physique, he possessed the best elements of leadership in his coolness, self-control, good judgment, and a persuasiveness of manner that made sternness unnecessary. He was appropriately called “ the busy man ” by one who remembers him : “ Colonel in the militia, elder in the church, foreman of the fire company, editor of the leading newspaper, he was probably one of the most popular men of his time.” “ As a friend and benefactor,” relates Dr. Bagg,* “ he was wise and helpful ; as a citizen, public-spirited beyond his means ; his counsels, his exertions, and his purse were ever at the service of individual want, and proffered in the promotion of every enterprise calculated to benefit the place. In short, in every relation Mr. Williams ranked high for his purity and integrity, his cheerfulness and equable temper, his self-sacrificing spirit, and. his practically useful life.”

Col. Williams’ house, after the practice of that time, was the home of most of the young men employed by him, and to the stirring Christian influence of this surrounding they frequently ascribed their subsequent successes in life. Their number in the course of twenty years was considerable, and a noticeable proportion of them acquired more than local reputations. Thurlow Weed, already referred to, joined this office and household in 1812, and there as a journeyman printer commenced his notable career and first wielded his vigorous pen. Henry Ivison, who emigrated as a lad to America from Scotland in 1829, was taken in charge by Mr. Williams, after his parents’ return to Scotland, as much from an impulse of pity for the boy’s lonely state as from a conviction that his intelligence and manly character could be turned to some account. The fine qualities of head and heart of the great publisher, as well as his almost paternal interest manifested in those under his employ, may be

* “ Pioneers of Utica,” p. 166.

DR. S. WELZS WILLIAMS.

fairly traced to his eight years spent under the roof of Mr. Williams. Others apprenticed in the same way were George S. Wilson, a devout and supremely benevolent character, whose noble, cheerful, and elevating influence upon the youths of Utica appears to have been something akin to magnetic, and who eventually, by dint of a selfacquired education, entered the ministry, and continued his useful career in Sacketts Harbor ; Alfred North, afterwards a missionary to the North American Indians ; Stephen Wells, George Hatch, Chauncey Dutton, and R. B. Shepard. The latter, through a long and prosperous lifetime, has attributed to Mr. Williams and his wife much of his success and all his spiritual happiness in life ; by means of the latter’s influence he was persuaded to become a teacher in the Sunday-school while still unconverted, and by her side afterwards, “ agonizing in prayer for his spiritual deliverance, he gave his heart to God and found peace.”

Mrs. Sophia Williams was an excellent example of what was highest, noblest, and best in the Puritan stock. Like her husband’s parents, her father, Samuel Wells, had come from New England among the early settlers in New Hartford. Foremost in piety, diligent in his affairs, the impress of his character appears clearly enough upon that of his daughter in her maturity, though his death took place too early in her life for us to consider her development as due directly to his moulding influence. He died when she was twelve years old, and while she was at school in his birthplace, Hartford, Connecticut. As the oldest of his six children, Sophia Wells was brought by this unexpected and overwhelming affliction to her mother’s side, and to the care of the younger children, thereby causing a sudden and entire alteration in her life, which had the natural effect of maturing her mind and sobering her disposition far beyond her years. This trait of sobriety, joined to the habits of untiring diligence and thrift acquired under her mother’s watchful influence, seems to have been a cardinal characteristic noticed and remembered by all who knew her ; to her brothers and sisters her example was the way of wisdom, her advice law ; to her companions in the village and church she was at once a pattern and a favorite, a girl whose natural impulse was forever towards the right, whose sympathy was alert in behalf of the unfortunate or the sorrowful.

Her conversion and union with the church took place when, about a year after her marriage, she gave birth to her first child. A severe and alarming illness ensued, from which indeed she never wholly recovered ; but during its course the awakening was complete, and by the sound and kindly counsel of her husband was the means of turning her from mere earthly goodness to an entire holiness of living, to a spiritual life of rare beauty and consistency. One of her closest friends was Mrs. Whittlesey, the founder and editor of The Mother s Magazine, with whose ideas and projects toward quickening mothers as a class to the mighty importance and responsibilities of their position she warmly sympathized. In return, Mrs. Whittlesey felt for her the most ardent admiration, as for one who was at once a model and a standard-bearer of her profession. “ Her watchful care by night and day ” (she says of her in the Magazine'), “ was unremitting. On

DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS.

the subject of training them while young to habits of industry, Mrs. Williams’ example furnished a model for every mother. The ten children who survived her, nine of whom were sons, were kept while young constantly employed by their mother. She was no less attentive to the best good of the young men in her husband’s printing establishment, many of whom became pious, and are now filling stations of usefulness. Nor were her servants forgotten. Many of them still revere her memory as one that cared for their souls. Nor was she inattentive to their temporal comfort and happiness. She encouraged them to fidelity by superintending every part of her house herself, when not absolutely confined to her room ; and she also assisted with her own hands in every departmentment of labor.” She joined the Maternal Association in 1825. “ Previous to this time she had never

raised her voice in prayer in the presence of others, not even with her children. Such was her extreme diffidence that it was not till her soul became exceedingly burdened by the spiritual necessities of her children that she could be persuaded to pray even with her Christian sisters. But no sooner did she take up this cross than she became a distinguished member of the association. It was here too that her last social prayer was offered up. The diffusiveness and fervor of that prayer will not soon fade from the recollection of those that heard it ; it was even at the time suggested to the minds of some present that they should hear her voice no more, so earnestly did she labor for an assurance that every child and mother belonging to the Association might meet in heaven.”

With her, prayer, precept, and practice went hand in lO hand ; from a kindly word of counsel to her children or their playmates, she turned to succor the beggar at her door ; from the religious meeting to the bedside of some sufferer ; from her own kitchen, laden with nourishing food for the starving, we hear of her as ever actively on the pathway of love and good works. This was before the days of hospitals, refuges for the destitute and fallen, homes for the needy and aged, and to such as this veritable mother in Israel the poor had learned to turn for relief, medicine, and food, for sympathy in distress, even for warm clothing in winter and employment at all times. The Sabbath-school she regarded with especial interest and affection, both from her husband’s responsibility in it and her own delight in laboring for the souls of little children. Though feeble in health, she never omitted a single preparation on Saturday evening for attending Sunday-school on the morrow with her entire flock, and this with absolute promptness ; their clothes in order, their lessons learned, their books and bibles gathered, her household went forth — teachers, children, apprentices, and servants — and trudged behind the good dame to church, a brave array ; and when they had taken their places in the school, there was no question among the others but that the time had come to begin.

Chiefest of all, however, her interest was aroused in the cause of missions; from this her attention never strayed; it seemed as though, after the change in her own spiritual life, she thought no effort too severe if it led to the salvation of a single soul. In such work her love and influence upon others were supreme. Mr. James Garritt, the first missionary from Oneida County, was not only

DR. S. WELLS WILLIAMS.

II fitted out by her own hands, but owed his conversion and much of his religious education to Mrs. Williams. Her last efforts of this kind were in behalf of Loring S. Williams, a missionary to the Choctaws. It is related that upon one occasion when in church, after listening to a warm appeal from the pulpit on behalf of the charity nearest to her heart, she found herself without the means of contributing to the collection which was being made ; but drawing from a mother’s holiest treasure, “ I give two of my sons,” she wrote, putting the paper into the basket with a prayer that was answered after her death by the lives of two of her sons, devoted no less sincerely than herself to the regeneration of the heathen.

Samuel Wells, the oldest of the fourteen children of William and Sophia Williams, was born in Utica, September 22, 1812. The ill-health of his mother made it necessary that his early infancy should be spent away from home, and for some years he was put in charge of his mother’s aunt. Miss Dana. That excellent woman once capsized the sleigh, while driving with him on a stormy day from New Hartford to visit his parents ; after picking herself and her conveyance out of the snow-drift, she hurried on, when with the recollection of her errand came the discovery that her muff and the baby stowed within it were lost. “ Shall I go back? ” she queried. “ Yes, for God may have something for him to do ; moreover, I cannot spare the muff.” The nurseling lived to thank his grand-aunt for many favors besides this, and treasured to the end of his life kindly memories alike of her nurture and admonition.

His early boyhood was passed without many companions in his grandmother’s house, a farm near New Hartford. “ Here I spent some of the happiest days of my childhood,” he observes in one of his letters, “ running at large over orchards, woods, and meadows, catching fish with pin-hooks and butterflies with straw-hats, scratching my hands in quest of blackberries and bruising my shins in endeavors after apples, riding horses to water and trying to milk cows, who I used to think half-laughed at my vain attempts.” The same gracious dame who had moulded the sterling character of his mother had an influence hardly less marked upon him. “ I have associations about Grandma Wells’ old house [he writes again] that are as ineffaceable as petrifactions — indeed, my mind was in the formative state when I used to ramble there, and she of all its attractions was brightest and best.” It was while living on the farm with his mother’s family that the boy came to be called by his middle name to distinguish him from her youngest brother Samuel.

When old enough to be of some use and less care in the house of his father. Wells came to Utica to live. The village is described in Spaffords’ “ New York Gazetteer ” of that time as a “ flourishing incorporated postvillage, the commercial capital of the great western district of this State, where are many mills, factories, machine shops, and avast many buildings other than those enumerated. Several printing offices and large book-stores, where weekly papers are published, which are widely circulated through the surrounding country. The hotel, which is an elegant establishment, and the many fine private mansions of gentlemen of taste and opulence, give Utica a character in

DR. S. WELLS WLLLLAMS.

this respect worthy a great commercial town.” This greatness would have been generously estimated by its five or six thousand inhabitants, but to a stranger its three or four muddy streets with tan-bark sidewalks, its few hundred wooden houses huddled between the Mohawk River and the newly cut canal intimated less of a commercial capital than existed in the minds and hopes of the enterprising Uticans. In those days the eager rivalry between them and the people of the older settlement of Whitestown had not yet subsided, and the struggle for supremacy was entered into with delight by the boys of both places. With them it meant, of course, regular pitched battles, in which Col. Williams’ boys hurried to the fray with the same impulse that had sent their father to fight the invaders from across the lake. On one Saturday afternoon the vanquished from Utica were dragged under a dripping aqueduct near the battle-ground and sent home to concoct plans of revenge upon their adversaries, while frightened mothers dried their sodden clothes. It is not recorded what they did in return.

The completion of the Erie Canal, however, settled all questions of emulation and pushed Utica at once to a foremost place among the towns of the State. Great was the enthusiasm when Gen. La Fayette, the nation’s guest, reached Utica upon the partly finished canal in June, 1825, and received an ovation from the delighted and patriotic citizens. The unbuilt, miry road, which had recently been laid out in front of the house where Wells was born, received the name of the popular Frenchman whom it commemorates to this day. Greater even than this occasion was the opening of the canal some four months later, when the lad of thirteen listened all day long with his impatient mates for the booming of the cannon that from hill-top to hill-top across the length of the State announced the inrush of the lake water into the channel which brought it to the ocean ; and when on the following Sunday the triumphant Governor Clinton, descending from Lake Erie to Sandy Hook, reached Utica with his flotilla, and with formal reverence attended divine service at the Presbyterian Church, the boy’s eyes seemed to see greatness for the first time, and gave to his mind an indelible impress of the scene.

His life at home was a busy one ; the children of honest parents in such a community knew no other. In some respects the serious and occupied household must have sorely weighed upon this eager and restless spirit. “ How I used to wish, when I was a boy,” he said once, “ that my father would sit down and talk with me about what was instructive and new ; but business and cares prevented me from enjoying any such intercourse. Our parents had no hobbies, and from mother I got very little encouragement in mine, though father always took an interest in them. However, they labored over my soul’s interest.” By reason of this, perhaps, he applied himself the more diligently to reading history and science, collecting insects on his grandmother’s farm, or in canal-boat excursions to Oriskany Swamp after Habenarias, Dalibarda, and Cypripedia.

He was not in any sense the insupportable “ good boy ” of the story book. If his pranks and scrapes were few, it was doubtless owing to his abundant occupations. Here is a memory of a boyish accident, told thirty years after

DR. S. WELLS WILLLAMS.

it occurred : “ How well I recollect sending a ball through the parlor window of Sam. Stocking’s house when he lived next to my father on Broad Street, and my errand to the house with money to pay damages, and a promise a yard long never to do so any more ! He very civilly took both silver and salutation, and I hardly ever spoke to him afterwards until my return to Utica in 1846.” His success at throwing was often more than he could bear. “ I could hit that old hen from here,” he once exclaimed to his brother, as they strolled one Sunday over his grandmother’s farm and spied a vagrant from the poultry yard. The brother naturally dared him to try the shot ; and Wells, to the amazement of both, laid the poor fowl low at a distance of two hundred feet. The good old lady’s indignation knew no bounds at this double desecration of her hennery and of the Sabbath-day, and in consequence thereof Wells went supperless to bed.