Church of the Brethen China Mission

This contains letters, documents, poems, journal entries, and photographs from 1907 to 1945. The bulk of the collection spans the years of 1913 to 1922 and details Anna Blough’s journeys and mission work in China. Anna Blough’s letters span from 1907 to 1922, the year that she died from typhus while working in China. These letters detail her two mission trips to China, and the people and culture that she encountered there. In addition to these letters, there are numerous responses from her family and loved ones, Anna’s essays and journal entries from her time in China, reports on the famine in China to the Church of the Brethren, and photographs and postcards from China in the early 1900s. This collection gives us an insight into the work of missionaries in this time period, Chinese culture, the difficulties of adapting to the Chinese language and culture and the lives of a Brethren family in the early 1900s.

Originals housed in the Hess Archives. This collection contains eleven teaching cloths painted with images captioned by Chinese characters. Each is made from thin, rectangular cloth and depict images of ideal family life, hygiene, and behavior according to Brethren and Christian values. These teaching cloths were used by Brethren missionaries Byron and Nora Flory as part of an effort to teach Chinese people in Shanxi province about Christianity and the connection between Christian and Confucian values. The cloths, which are colorfully painted and often feature images of children and families, were hung in “gospel tents” taken to villages and set up as a means of visually teaching villagers about Christian values promoted by missionaries.

Original materials digitized in the Anna V. Blough Missionary Letters and Diaries from China

The Lloyd and Ellen Cunningham Papers, spanning the years 1936 to 2000, includes letters, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, photographs, government correspondence, and other papers. The majority of the collection is centered around 1938 to 1957. The collection contains many letters between Lloyd and Ellen Cunningham and their friends and family back home. The letters cover a wide range of topics including everyday life, missionary work, internment, raising their children, liberation from internment, conditions in China leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War, and conditions in China around the time of the Communist Revolution.

The Rev. Norman and Anna Bowman Seese Family Papers, spanning the years 1917-1951, primarily document the family’s Church of the Brethren missionary work in China from 1917-1928. It contains photographs from their missionary trip, a file of notes on the missionary trip recording day-to-day events and facts about Chinese history and culture, a file of letters from Norman and Anna to their parents in America, letters addressed to various recipients including Ephriam Seese, Norman Seese, Lucinda Seese, Susie Seese, and Sylvia Seese Bieber, and photographs and newspaper articles of Sylvia Seese Bieber in her work with the Church of the Brethren in America.