Maintaining Connections

One of the soapstone pieces Maggie
sent to her family in the 1850s

When the Martins had to leave China in 1858 due to Samuel’s poor health, Samuel passed the leadership of the boys’ boarding school, which had been under his care for several years, to Mr. Ze, a local man who was his assistant.  In a letter to Redick Wylie on May 21, 1867, Maggie wrote that “Several of [Samuel’s] pupils became useful ministers among their countrymen, one of them Ling Yien gathered a church of 100 in 6 or 8 years.”  In 1894, 36 years after the Martins left China, the mission’s report stated that Samuel “still corresponds occasionally with his former pupils, now the prominent pastors in Ningpo Presbytery, in their own tongue” (Jubilee Papers 20).

The Martins’ time in China impacted not only their lives, but also the lives of their descendants.  Maggie and Samuel named their son Nevius, who was born in Texas in 1860, after their Ningpo missionary friends John and Helen Nevius (letter to Anderson Wylie, 10 February 1866).  Furthermore, the Wylie House Museum still has several of the items that Maggie’s niece, Frances L. Bell, wrote about on April 8, 1918: “While in China Aunt Martin sent a large box of Chinese curios to her sisters.”

In April 2019, a Chinese film crew filmed at the Wylie House while making a documentary about Samuel’s brother William, who was a student of Andrew Wylie’s at IU, was also a missionary in Ningpo, and later became an interpreter and friend of Chinese emperor Aisin Zaitian (1871-1908).