Horace Tracy Pitkin

Horace Tracy Pitkin (Chinese name Bi Dejing, 毕得经; 1869 – July 1, 1900) was an American missionary with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (the Congregational mission) who was killed in Baoding, China, during the Boxer Uprising of 1900. In his memory, students at his alma mater, Yale University, founded the Yale Mission in China.

Early years

Pitkin was born in Philadelphia in 1869. His mother was a descendant of Elihu Yale, the benefactor after whom Yale College is named. The Pitkin family lived in Manchester, Hartford County, Connecticut. In 1884 Pitkin entered the well-known Phillips Exeter Academy in the town of Exeter, New Hampshire. Already in his secondary school years he was quite devout and eager in evangelistic work on campus; he played a leading role in the Christian Endeavor movement at the school, which led the local saloons to close one after another and change trades. In 1888, at the age of 19, he entered Yale University, where he excelled in music, writing and volunteer activities. He led a student fellowship and a Sunday school and was widely admired for his sunny disposition and firm convictions.

In the summer of 1889, Pitkin and the student fellowship he led went to the Northfield School, founded by the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody in Massachusetts, for the annual Northfield Conference. At the conference he was deeply moved by the Student Volunteer Movement's watchword, "The evangelization of the world in this generation," and he led the way in signing the pledge of the Student Volunteer Movement: "I am willing, and desirous, God permitting, to be a foreign missionary." His fervor drew large numbers of students to join the overseas missionary enterprise with him. After graduating from Yale University in 1892, he entered Union Theological Seminary in New York and also served for a year as secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement. In 1894 he and his fiancée, Letitia Thomas, a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, applied together to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Work and martyrdom in China

In 1896 Pitkin graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York and married Letitia. The newly married couple sailed from New York in November 1896, traveled by way of the Holy Land, Egypt and India, reached Shanghai on March 7, 1897, and landed at Tianjin in May. In Baoding, Zhili Province, they received Chinese language training with the American Board.

The Boxer Uprising broke out in 1900. In June the Qing court openly declared its support for the anti-Christian, anti-foreign Boxers. It transferred Tingjie (廷杰), the Provincial Administration Commissioner of Zhili, who had advocated suppressing them, and promoted Tingyong (廷雍), who advocated supporting them, to that post. Tingyong ordered the city gates shut so that missionaries and Chinese Christians could not escape, and sent a brigade commander surnamed Zhang (a deputy general, then called xierong 协戎) with troops to suppress the Christians, allowing the Boxers within a few days to burn down nearly all the churches in Zhili Province; many missionaries were killed. Among them, all 23 Protestant missionaries and their children in Baoding were killed over two days, June 30 and July 1 (the 4th and 5th days of the 6th lunar month), at Fenghuangtai outside the south city gate (today on the west side of the pharmaceutical company on Huancheng South Road), and more than 100 Chinese Christians were killed. The martyrs included the missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (Northern Presbyterian) at the North Gate church: the Rev. Frank Edson Simcox and his family of five, Dr. Cortlandt V. R. Hodge and his wife, and Dr. George Yardly Taylor (Chinese name Luo Ziyun, 罗子云); the American Board missionaries at the South Gate church, the Rev. Horace Tracy Pitkin, Miss Mary Susan Morrill and Miss Annie Allender Gould; and the China Inland Mission missionaries in Baoding, William Cooper and Benjamin Bagnall. Pitkin was beheaded on July 1. His head was offered before the altar of the deities worshiped by the Boxers and then hung in front of the Baoding prefectural office for three days and three nights. At the time his wife and their infant son, little Horace, were in the United States. Pitkin asked Lao Wan (老万) to carry his last words to his family: "Now we may not live to see the end of this turmoil, but this is dying for the highest calling. Tell little Horace's mother to bless little Horace; his father's last wish is that when Horace is 25 years old he will return to China as a missionary."

Pitkin's death led some students at Yale University to create an organization to send missionaries to China. One student said, "Pitkin's martyrdom ... made me resolve to see whether it might be possible for us, as Yale men, in some way to make amends for Pitkin's sacrifice." The Yale Mission in China was founded in June 1901.