MARRYING MISSIONARY

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20653, 29 June 1935, Page 8

MARRYING MISSIONARY

BURIED WITH FOUR WIVES. SURVIVED A ROUND HALF-DOZEN. SHANGHAI, May 22. In an old foreign cemetery !n the city of Ningpo, about 100 miles from Shanghai, there are a number of weather-worn gravestones, on one of which appears the following inscription : “In Mempry of "F. B. LIGHTFOOT LORD N “Beloved wife “of “Edw. C. Lord ‘Born at Quincy, 111., “U.S.A., “August 15, 1851, “Died at Ningpo “Sept. 15, 1887.’* Mrs. F. B. Liglitfoot Lord, who. according to the inscription on the tombstone in the little Ningpo graveyardj was born at Quincy and died in China at the age of 30, was the last of sixwives of an American who for many years was known on the China coast as the “marrying missionary.” The bodies of three preceding wives of the Rev. Edward C. Lord are also buried in the Ningpo graveyard. Of the two others who are not buried here, one died at sea and was buried in the Pacific, while the other is said to be buried at Carlisle, New York, the native home of the Rev. Lord. The Rev. Lord, whose body also rests in the Ningpo cemetery alongside those of four of his wives, was born at Carlisle, New York, on January 20, 1817, being one of the first missionaries to arrive in China. He was a member of the American Baptist Missionary union and died in Ningpo on September 17, 1887, apparently only two days following the death of his sixth wife, the former Miss F. B. Lightfoot, who came from Quincy. In addition to his work as “missionary to the heathens,” and as the husband of six wives, the Rev. Lord also served as the United States Consul at Ningpo for a period of 17 years. Tli&re are numerous dispatches bearing his name on file in the archives of the American Con-sulate-General .at Shanghai and at the United States Legation in Peiping, several complaining at the parsimonious policy of the State Department in refusing to pay him a regular salary. In consequence he was compelled to subsist on fees, which, he declared, never exceeded £IOO a year. His tombstone in the Ningpo cemetery, in addition to the information about the date and place of his birth and death, contains the following verse from 1 Cor. lx 25, “So run that ye may obtain. Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all tilings. They do it to receive a corruptible crown but we au incorruptible.”