People Stories - Lindsay

One day in the Fall of 2013, we received the following email from a man named Lindsay.

Dear Pastor Mark

My apologies for this rather unusual email from stage left.  I came across your website whilst investigating the death of my great grandfather, Reverend William Cooper. William was deputy director of the China Inland Mission and lived in China from 1880 to 1900.  Tragically he was beheaded in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 at Pao-ting Fu (now called Baoding in Hebei province). He had been in China for 20 years and spoke fluent Mandarin. The China Inland Mission was a British Protestant organization established by Hudson Taylor and William had become something of a Chief Secretary who looked after the various missions whilst based in Shanghai.

It seems that he was traveling the country visiting various missions when he was caught up in the Boxer Rebellion. The CIM did not have a formal mission at Pao-ting Fu but did have a business office run by Mr & Mrs Bagnall.  The largest Christian missions in the city were the American Board and the American Missionary Mission. Accordingly, most of the missionaries martyred on that day (June 30, 1900 or July 1, 1900) were American. The events are quite well known as they were subsequently investigated by an American expedition. It seems that one set of missionaries were killed at the American mission compound whilst another group, including William, were rounded up, given a mock trial in a temple, marched out of the city gates and beheaded.

9 months later, the Europeans marched into the city and put to death a number of officials deemed responsible. They recovered what was left of the bodies (often just skulls) and gave them a Christian burial (with quite a bit of pomp and ceremony) in a cemetery next to the American Board compound. There is a photo of the 23 graves lined up with a small church in the background.

I am attempting to find this site to determine if the remains of William and his American counterparts have been preserved. As you can imagine, this is a difficult thing to do from a distance (I am based in [another city]) and so I thought I would reach out to you for any advice/contacts that could help in identifying the location of this cemetery. I’m wondering if someone at the US Embassy might be interested in locating this historical site or if there are records that could identify the location of the American Board compound and the cemetery. The burial seems to have been well documented at the time and is even recounted in a report held in the Library of Congress. If we can find the location, we may be able to find the mortal remains of the American missionaries and also William.

I’ve attached a chapter from a book I obtained which tells the story of that very fateful day.

One for Sherlock Holmes but you never know….it may be possible to find them.

With very best wishes

 Lindsay ---

And so began a contact and a friendship.

Mark and Lindsay arranged to meet for coffee last fall when Lindsay was in Beijing on a business trip. Lindsay brought a colleague of his and Mark brought a friend and they all gathered for a couple-hour chat.

As Lindsay continued to research his roots, he and Mark remained in touch. Fast forward to the week of May 19 when Lindsay was again in Beijing for business. He arranged a trip to Baoding with us to try to locate the gravesite of his great-grandfather. In the process, one of his Chinese co-workers made contact with a Chinese pastor who then helped by asking older people in the city what they knew about the Boxer Rebellion, the American missionary activity, and related locations. The pastor and one of his parishioners escorted us around Baoding on the hunt for Rev. William Cooper’s grave.

Based on information gathered from a 90-year-old local citizen, we found the location of the American Mission Board compound and walked around what is now rubble. We discovered broken down walls, foundation stones, walls that defined rooms, and an archway that may have been the entrance to the chapel. Many such sites were completely destroyed during China’s Cultural Revolution so there wasn’t much left of the compound. We imagined the direction of the gravesites running east to west of the compound based on a historical picture. We also noticed that out of the rubble grew a beautiful flowering tree. A bit ironic that beauty springs from death.

Then we drove along the walls of the city, imagining William and the others being marched outside the city to their death. We also drove to what was a Presbyterian cemetery until just five years ago when a hotel development was built on the site. A small overgrown area of the former cemetery remained across the hotel parking lot. But the graves had been dug up in the name of economic progress.  We walked along the stone-lined rock-laid paths wondering which of the martyred missionaries had been buried there. A large rock edifice surrounded by flowering plants marked the entrance to the cemetery. Not like in the States where statues of Jesus dot the burial grounds.

As Mark & I got caught up in this adventure, we grew to appreciate the legacy of William Cooper. In our discussions with Lindsay, we learned that the great Christian preacher Charles H. Spurgeon greatly influenced William to serve in China. We learned what kind of godly man William was and that he was slated to succeed Hudson Taylor at the China Inland Mission.  We learned that Lindsay truly admired his grandfather, the youngest of William’s four children who were left fatherless.

Knowing about Rev. William Cooper's life and death reminds us of Hebrews 12:1 that says we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who encourage us to run the race of life with endurance, focusing on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith.  May we be imitators of Rev. William Cooper just as he was of Jesus Christ.