Samuel Martin & Margaret Wylie

1846 article about Samuel’s IU graduation

Lady Mary Wood, the steamer Samuel & Maggie took from Hong Kong to Shanghai, c. 1845

Samuel Newell Depew Martin (1825-1903) was born in Livonia, Indiana, on January 11, 1825, and Margaret “Maggie” Wylie (1826-1898) was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, on December 23, 1826.  Both were primed to become missionaries; Maggie was raised in the Presbyterian church, and Samuel grew up on tales of missionary life.  When he was seven, his mother’s half-brother William Patterson Alexander (1805-1884) became a missionary in the Hawaiian Islands, and when he was ten, his older sister Martha Alice (1813-1896) and her husband Henry Isaac Venable (1811-1878) became missionaries in South Africa.

Samuel met Maggie while studying under her father, Andrew Wylie (1789-1851), at Indiana University.  Samuel graduated from IU on September 30, 1846, and he and Maggie were married in Bloomington on May 17, 1849, after his graduation from New Albany Theological Seminary.  On November 22, 1849, the couple boarded a ship in Philadelphia in answer to the Presbyterian Mission Board’s call for missionaries in the city of Ningpo, China.

The Martins sailed South from Philadelphia, went around the continent of South America, and crossed the Pacific Ocean to reach their new home.  After five months of traveling, on April 29, 1850, they were surprised by the premature birth of their first son on a steamer north of Hong Kong. They named him after Bishop William Jones Boone (1811-1864), who welcomed them into his home in Shanghai to rest before they went on to their final destination. The family arrived safe and healthy in Ningpo on May 29, 1850.

Six months later, in November 1850, Maggie wrote to her parents, “Tis in heaven I hope to meet you,” suggesting that she did not think she would see them again before she died.  However, she and Samuel ended up having to leave China in 1858, and they did see their families again.  The Martins’ time in Ningpo, though much shorter than anticipated, deeply impacted the rest of their lives.