Foster Family Papers

John Barton Foster, founder of this Baptist missionary family, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 8, 1822. Though there is little information regarding his parents, there is evidence of at least two or three possible siblings: Bina Kingsbury, Clymena Robinson, and Annie Richardson.

At the age of six, Foster became a resident of Waterville, Maine. He was one of the first pupils to enroll at the Waterville Academy, now Oak Grove-Coburn, when it opened in 1829. According to one obituary, Foster spent part of his time between 1836-1839 learning a trade, although none is specified. (See "Obituaries and Miscellaneous," Series 5, Box 16, Folder 120. All quotes, unless otherwise indicated are from this source.) In 1839, Foster entered Colby College, then called Waterville College, where he is recorded as having high rank as a scholar, especially in the classics. After graduation in 1843, Foster taught at academies at China, Maine, and Lexington, Massachusetts. Resigning his position in the latter institution in 1847, he entered Newton Theological Institution, and was graduated in 1850. The General Catalogue of The Newton Theological Institution 1826-1943 records John Barton Foster as an 1850 graduate, with experience teaching at China, Maine from 1844-1845, and at Lexington, Massachusetts from 1845-1846. A child's essay mentions that Foster was sent as a replacement for the first pastor of the Gardiner Village Baptist Church on January 9, 1846, serving there for three years. (See "Writings, Series 3, Box 13, Folder 6, for essay by Pete Glasier.)

During the summer following graduation, Mr. S.G. Smith, a former associate of Foster's from Newton Theological Institution, vacated the editorship of Zion's Advocate, a Baptist newspaper printed weekly at Portland, Maine. Foster assumed the position of editor. The September 20, 1850 issue of Zion's Advocate was the first to bear the imprint "J.B. Foster, Editor." It is likely that his marriage to Ann Doe, of whom little is known, occurred during this period. Foster's only child, John Marshall Foster, was born at Portland, Maine, on July 21, 1857.

Foster remained with the newspaper until 1858, when, like his predecessor, he joined the faculty at Colby College. Early in 1862 his wife, Ann Doe Foster, died. By 1872, Foster had remarried. His second wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Deacon J. W. Philbrook of Waterville, Maine.

Foster headed the Department of Latin and Greek Literature at Colby College for fifteen years. When the department divided in 1873, he retained the chair of Greek Literature. The college awarded him an honorary LL.D. in 1876. In 1893 or 1894, Foster resigned to become Professor Emeritus .

In addition to his academic life, Foster participated in a host of religious activities. He taught an adult Bible class for over thirty years, and was on the Standing Committee of his church for nearly that long. He was also church treasurer, Supervisor of Waterville Public Schools, an occasional preacher, and Treasurer of the Maine Baptist Missionary Convention from 1863-1893. The "limitation of physical infirmity", noted in one obituary, is the only mention of a possible handicap. Foster died on August 19, 1897, at the age of seventy-five.

John Marshall Foster was born John May Foster and changed his middle name at an unknown date. He shared his father's academic and religious interests. After graduating from Coburn Classical Institute, now Oak Grove-Coburn, Foster joined the Class of 1877 at Colby College. In 1877, he probably entered a business venture in New Britain, Connecticut. A telegram to his stepmother asking that she come to New Britain immediately as her stepson was seriously ill is one of the few traces of this period.

Foster entered Newton Theological Institution in 1884, was ordained three years later on October 17, 1887, and helped found the Baptist Church at Vassalboro, Maine, during this period. It was also in 1887 that Foster responded to an appeal for China volunteers made by Baptist missionary William Ashmore. Sailing from San Francisco later the same year, Foster's journey ended at Shantou (Swatow), center of the South China Mission on January 4, 1888. (Rev. William Ashmore, who had planned the opening of the Shantou (Swatow) station in 1858, began actual work at the mission in 1863. In 1872, he assumed the leadership of the station, which Clara Hess and John Marshall Foster arrived at a decade later. Ashmore's awareness of the need for a native ministry eventually resulted in the establishment of the Ashmore Theological Seminary, of which Foster served as acting President from 1909-1921, according to the General Catalogue of The Newton Theological Institution 1826-1943.)

In January 1889, Foster married fellow Baptist missionary Clara Hess, who had also been recruited by William Ashmore. Clara Hess (1859-1945), a native of Buffalo, New York, was one of thirteen children of immigrants from Baden-Baden, Germany. She taught German in Buffalo, New York, before her departure for Shantou (Swatow). Clara Joined the South China Mission on Christmas Day 1886 or 1887, with the purpose of assisting Adele M. Fielde. Miss Fielde had founded a training school for "Bible women", native women who performed Christian services and acted as the link between the missionaries and the native church. Clara studied the Chinese language under Miss Fielde's special supervision, using her published text, First Lessons in the Swatow Dialect, as a guide. Clara's time was spent immersed in women's activities, taking charge of women's field work, the women's school, and at one time, the girls' school as well. Her first child, Anna Elizabeth Foster, was born in January 1899. Five other children were to follow: John Hess, Helen, Frank Clifton, Clarence, and Grace.

The Fosters returned to the United States for their first furlough in 1894 and stayed for three years. After the first year, spent at Clifton Springs, New York, the family moved to Burton, Vashon Island, Washington, located between Seattle and Tacoma. John Marshall Foster had purchased property in Centralia, Washington, also near Tacoma, about 1893, which may have provided impetus for the move West.

At Burton, the Fosters helped establish the "Home for the Children of Foreign Missionaries", which lodged the three eldest Foster children when their father returned to China in 1897. Clara Hess Foster remained nearby with the younger children. In 1898, after the death of his father, John Marshall Foster returned briefly to the United States, arriving in May, sailing in November. Clara and the youngest children returned with him to China at this time.

The outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, however, forced Clara to return to America with the children. A postcard to his stepmother indicates that John Marshall Foster spent time in Bangkok, Thailand (then "Siam"), the location of another Baptist Mission, about 1902. In 1903, he began a second furlough and received an honorary D.D. degree from Colby College for his part in saving the Shantou (Swatow) mission during the Boxer Rebellion.

For the duration of the second furlough, 1903-1908, John Marshall Foster was President of Vashon College and Academy, at Burton, Washington. The institution, founded as a seminary for young women and a military academy for young men and boys, floundered under financial difficulty. Fire destroyed the administration building in 1909. This was apparently a trying period for the Foster family, as John Marshall Foster mentions "the hard time we have been through the past few years" and "the heavy strain of life" in an October 19, 1908 letter to his stepmother. A year later, October 22, 1909, he still notes "the storm and stress of the years we carried the load up at the college" in another letter to Elizabeth B. Foster.

In 1908, Foster began his third term of field service, while the family remained at Burton. At least part of the term probably 1909-1910 and 1912, was spent in Bangkok, Thailand. Foster became acting President of Ashmore Theological Seminary in 1909, a position he held until 1921. In 1914, he returned briefly to the United States via Siberia and England.

Foster's final term began in 1914, and again he visited Thailand (Siam). In 1915 Clara Hess Foster returned to China after an absence of fiteeen years. The following year, Frank Clifton Foster, their son, arrived at Shantou (Swatow). The eldest Foster child, Anna Elizabeth, returned to teach in her native land in 1917. Another Foster, John Hess, began teaching at Yale-in-China, Changsha, Hunan, two years later.

In 1921, John Marshall Foster's health began to fail, and he retired to Buffalo, New York. In a letter dated August 31, 1921(?), Frank Clifton Foster writes of an unexplained great shock which was expected to hospitalize his father for several weeks. John Marshall Foster died at Buffalo, New York, on May 9, 1924. Clara Hess Foster lived with her children until her death in 1949.

Anna Elizabeth, John Hess, and Frank Clifton, three of the children of Clara Hess and John Marshall Foster carried on the tradition of their parents by returning to China to work. Anna E. Foster returned to China in 1917 under the auspices of the American Baptist Mission Society. She taught at the Kwang Yit Girls' School in Meiheien, South China until 1940 when illness and the Communist take-over caused her return to the United States. She worked for twelve years as an officer at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women in Framingham before her retirement. Anna E. Foster died May 25, 1968. Frank Clifton Foster, born in 1894, returned to China in 1916 and taught at the Swatow Academy in Shantou (Swatow) until 1919. When World War I broke out, Frank left to serve with the YMCA, American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia and Manchuria for six months. A graduate of Colby College, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia University, Teachers College, he had a varied career serving as Professor of Education, University of Maine, Specialist Institutional Services, and Director, UNRRA, Germany, President of Asheville Normal and Teachers College, Asheville, North Carolina. He retired in 1970, and died in 1973.

John Hess Foster, born in 1891, graduated from Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1917 and returned to China in 1919 to spend almost nine years on the Medical Staff of the Hunan-Yale Hospital in Changsha. During the period 1919 to 1927 he spent one year (1923-1924) working and studying in the Boston City Hospital and as an Assistant in Medicine at Harvard University. In January, 1927, when a student strike finally closed the academic branches of Yale-in-China, John Hess, his wife, Helen, and children John and Ann, left Changsha along with a number of other Yale-in-China personnel. In February several of the families sailed to the United States on the "President Jackson". Later in the spring of 1927 the family settled in Waterbury, Connecticut where Dr. Foster began his private medical practice. John Hess Foster died March 2, 1985.

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