Swedish American Missionaries in China

No, my grandparents weren’t missionaries in China. But in 1924, my grandpa, Emil, who had been ordained in 1922, was pastoring a Lutheran church in Dallas, Texas. Keep reading to find out what a post about Swedish missionaries has to do with them.

Not long ago I was fascinated to read a post by my Swedish blogging friend, Thérèse Amnéus’. (I mentioned her blog in “Vintage Weddings” as well as “Swedish Roots”.) Thérèse’s great grandparents, Robert and Dagny, were Lutheran missionaries to China, along with other members of their family, starting in the 1890s and early 1900s. I’m not sure why, but it had never occurred to me that there would be missionaries from Sweden in China that long ago.

Even after reading about Thérèse’s family, it hadn’t dawned on me that I had my own photo album of Lutheran missionaries in China, too. I had forgotten all about it, tucked away in the “Johnson side” of the blue dresser in the front living room. Most of the photos seem to be from around 1924, but I didn’t recognize any of the people in them. When I rediscovered the album, I immediately wanted to find out who these people were and how they ended up in my grandparents’ belongings. Who had put this album together, and who had written the captions on the backs and pasted them under the photos?

At first, based on this postcard, I thought the album had been given to my grandma by Agnes Christenson, a missionary who had visited them in Dallas in February of 1924. In her letter, dated February 18, and mailed from Austin, Texas, Miss Christenson thanked Edla for her hospitality and told her how much she had enjoyed visiting Texas. It was later that I realized the photo on the postcard was definitely taken in India, not China, and the captions were in different handwriting.

I found this February 1924 article on Newspapers.com, from Lindsborg, Kansas. It outlines Miss Christenson’s presentation about her missionary work in India and points out that she had left “on Friday morning” for an “extended trip to Texas” to give more missionary lectures. I can only conclude that the church in Dallas was part of her itinerary, and that she had most likely stayed, or at least visited, with my grandparents in their home. But if Agnes Christenson was not responsible for the rest of the album, then who was?

In my quest for information, I was able to carefully peel most of the photos off the pages, thanks to the fact that whoever put the album together had only put glue on the corners instead of all over the backs. This in itself was miraculous, since that had not been the rule for the majority of the albums I have on any side of my family.

I finally narrowed it down to Miss Anna Anderson (right), based on the captions underneath and on the back of this photo.

Typed on the back of the photo: “Mrs. Trued with whom I have worked in Women’s Work this year, and I outside our home.”

There were some connections between my grandparents and the people in the album after all. Rev. Alfred Trued attended Augustana College, around ten years before my grandfather, Emil. According to Rev. Trued’s obituary, he was ordained in the Augustana Synod in 1907, as was Emil in 1922. His younger brothers, Martin and (Samuel) Clarence, were part of the Augustana College band in 1917, along with Emil, when the majority of them enlisted in the Army and served in France during the last part of WW1. You can see more pictures of Emil, Clarence, and Martin in “Cast of Characters”.

This is one of my favorites from the album. I found descendants of Rev. Wyman and Minnie Tack and shared with them on Ancestry. I also researched Thyra Lawson, Anna Anderson, Ebba Person (not in this photo but mentioned in parentheses) and the Thelander family, shown below.

I was able to share this photo with the Thelander’s grandson, (Philip’s son), whom I found by researching the Thelander family on Ancestry.com. Later I found that I had a letter from Rev. Thelander (Philip’s father) to Emil, dated 1926, discussing dates for a visit to Emil’s church in Bay City, Michigan, and I was able to share that with them as well. It was amazing to be able to message people I don’t know and find that our grandparents had crossed paths 100 years ago.

Thyra Lawson, at the far left of the group photo, delivered the Trueds’ son Constantine in Honan, China, in 1914, and the Lundeen’s son Joel in 1918. I can only imagine that it would be scary to give birth thousands of miles from home, and it was probably comforting to the mothers to have their friend, whom they called “Sister Thyra” there with them. Thyra never married, and according to her obituary, passed away in 1978 at the age of 93.

Screenshot from Ancestry showing Anton Milton’ Lundeen’s birth notice. He was delivered in China by Dr. C. B. Friberg, as was the Lundeen’s second child, Reuben.

Mrs. Ruth Ludeen with her three oldest children “taken at Juchow last November out in our front yard.” The baby Mrs. Lundeen is holding is (Anton) Milton, whose birth notice you saw above. I’m not a great judge of age when it comes to babies, but if little Milton was a year old in the photo, that means “last November” would been November 1923. But if he was around six months old, it would have been November 1922, a month after his father, Rev. Anton Lundeen, below, was taken captive.

Rev. Anton Lundeen was only 30 years old when he and another missionary were kidnapped by a group described as brigands, or bandits, on October 13, 1922. The incident was all over the newspapers in the U.S., especially in states like Nebraska, Kansas, and Minnesota, where a lot of the missionaries were from. Mrs. Lundeen and Anna Anderson each wrote detailed accounts of their experience. Rev. Lundeen was held for over 50 days before being returned.

This is an excerpt from a letter by Anna A. Anderson, dated October 14, 1922, and published in the Newman Grove, Nebraska newspaper the following month. The Anna she refers to in the first sentence above was Miss Anna Johnson (no relation to Emil). She is describing what had happened the day before, when Rev. Lundeen was taken captive. You can see that she lists the children’s ages as baby (Anton) Milton, 5 and a half months, Reuben, two years, and Joel, four. The links to the actual article on Newspapers.com are here: Anna Anderson Letter Part 1 and Anna Anderson Letter Part 2. It is a fascinating read. I had to make two separate “clippings” because the letter was so long that it started on one page and was continued on another. There are also links to Mrs. Lundeen’s account of the incident, which can be found here: Part 1 and Part 2.

Miss Ebba Person, I discovered, was originally from Minnesota. According to newspaper articles I found, she went to China in the fall of 1923 and came home on furlough in 1927. I’m not sure when she returned to the U.S. for good, but it could have been in 1937, when she appeared on a list of U.S. citizens sailing on the S.S. President McKinley from Shanghai to Seattle, Washington.

An article from Oct 28, 1927, New Richland, MN, (Newspapers.com) and Ebba’s senior photo from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1928 (Ancestry.com). Ebba kept a detailed diary, and the section of it, from “the [Chinese civil] war days”, was published in the newspaper in 1930, after she had sent it in a letter to a friend. In the letter/diary, Ebba details the attacks and bombings carried out on the mission and surrounding areas by the armies of Chinese general Feng Yuxiang and his ally Fan Chun Hsao. The excerpts from Ebba’s diary can be found on Newspapers.com at the following links. Ebba’s Diary Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Ebba married Theodore Nelson in 1940 and continued to give missionary talks as Mrs. Ebba Person Nelson. She passed away in 1959 at the age of 68.

Among those who spent the longest time in China was Miss Minnie Tack. She is pictured second from the right, next to Anna Anderson in the group photo you saw earlier in this post. From her family tree on Ancestry, I learned that Minnie spent over 50 years in China. She arrived in China in 1921, and her first assignment was to oversee the orphanage pictured above. She was forced to leave China in 1944 during the Communist takeover but returned in 1948 and remained until 1970, when she retired at the age of 70. Minnie passed away in Minnesota in 2001, at the age of 101.

As I have mentioned, I believe Anna Anderson was the one who either put together my grandparents’ missionary album or at least wrote the captions on the back of the pictures. I found her passport application and photo on Ancestry. The photo on the right is from my grandparents’ “missionary” album.

If you look closely at this screenshot of her passport application, you can see that Anna’s departure date for China was set for September 15, 1921, 104 years ago this month. She was to sail on the Empress of Russia, a ship that according to Wikipedia would carry Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek the following year from Hong Kong to Shanghai.

On June 30, 1932, after nine years on the mission field, Anna married Eric Seth Bankson in her home state of Nebraska. This excerpt from the Central City, Nebraska newspaper describes Anna’s dress as having been made of “India silk lace over India white crepe satin”. It had been “designed by a Russian lady and made by a Chinese tailor in Hankow, China”. I do wish there had been a photo with the article, but there wasn’t. Anna passed away in Vancouver, Washington, on July 27, 1960, at the age of 67.

My grandfather Emil often signed letters “In His Glad Service, as he did in this one in 1969. In thinking about the Trueds, the Lundeens, the Thelanders, Anna Anderson, Thyra Lawson, Ebba Person and all the rest, I am impressed by the sacrifices they made for “His glad service.” I don’t know if I would have what it takes to do what they did, especially during the political unrest and civil war that was going on in China at the time. A number of them were single women in their twenties and thirties, and several, like Minnie Tack and Thrya Lawson, never married, but devoted their whole lives to the mission field. I’m glad to have been “introduced” them through Emil and Edla’s 1924 picture album. This was one “Ancestry rabbit-hole” that I thoroughly enjoyed falling into.