Francis Huberty James

Francis Huberty James (June 1851 – June 20, 1900), Chinese name Xiu Yaochun (秀耀春), was a British Christian missionary who served first with the China Inland Mission and then with the Baptist Missionary Society; after leaving mission service he worked at the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai and at the Imperial University of Peking. He was killed on June 20, 1900, during the Boxer Uprising and is regarded as a martyr.

Early life

James was born in June 1851 in the small village of Upton in Berkshire. He was the third of five children; his father John James (1824–1897) and his mother Sarah Mitten (1818–1889) had married in 1847. The James family had long been the village blacksmiths; his father John, together with Francis's brothers John, Joseph and Matthew, started a grocery and bakery. His sister Martha also worked in the new shop, while her husband Richard Bellamy took over the blacksmith's work. In the early twentieth century his brother John also ran a post office in the shop. James followed suit and at 20 became a baker in the family business. From his mother he inherited a compassionate nature, and from his father a tenacious sense of mission and strength of will; these were his chief characteristics.

Mission in China

In 1876, aged 25, James joined the China Inland Mission founded by Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) and was sent to China as a missionary, arriving on March 14. He and Joshua J. Turner set out carrying more than 4000 Gospels, evangelistic booklets and gospel tracts. In three winter months they covered 1700 miles, preaching as they travelled through Jiangsu, Anhui and Hubei, going from Zhenjiang by way of Nanjing, across Anhui Province, to Wuhan. In 1877–1878 they were also among the first Protestant missionaries to enter Shanxi Province, where they took part in famine relief; the great famine there killed one third of the province's population. The reports on the famine published by James and other missionaries brought relief funds from all over the world.

In 1878 he married a fellow China Inland Mission missionary, Miss Hu (Marie Huberty), a French-speaking Belgian (born in 1846 in Liège, Belgium; died in Santa Cruz, California, United States, date unknown). She had graduated from the French Protestant school in Liège. He took her maiden name as his own middle name.

For the next two years James worked in Henan and North China. He was fluent in Chinese. In 1881 he, along with many other young members, left the China Inland Mission.

In 1881 James returned to England, and in 1883 he joined the Baptist Missionary Society, working in turn at Jimo, Qingzhou and Jinan in Shandong, China. In 1892 he resigned from the Baptist Missionary Society over differences of opinion.

After this he spent several years in the United States; in 1895 he gave the Lowell Lectures in Boston on Chinese history, religion and philosophy. In 1897 he returned to China and became a compiler-translator in the Translation Department of the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai. He held this post for about a year, and then, by invitation, became English instructor at the Imperial University of Peking in Beijing, which he remained until his death.

Death

In June 1900, when the Boxers besieged the foreign legations in Beijing, many Christian churches and buildings were burned and large numbers of Chinese Christians were killed. James took refuge in the palace of Prince Su (Su Wangfu), directly across the canal from the besieged legations, and provided shelter for about 3000 Chinese Christians facing the threat of death. On June 20, 1900, as James was preparing to go to the relatively safe British Legation, he was captured by Chinese soldiers and was never seen again.

Some sources say he was beheaded on the orders of the general commanding the siege of the legations, and his head was displayed on a spear; others say he was shot. He was the second prominent foreigner killed after the Chinese government declared war, the first being the German minister Clemens von Ketteler. Thousands of Christians died in the upheaval, including 182 Protestant missionaries. The term "China Martyrs of 1900" came to be used by Protestant churches to describe the massacre.

Family

By 1893 he had left his wife and children in the United States so that the children could continue their schooling. They had two sons. The elder, Hubert Carey James (born 1879 in Shanxi, China; died 1953 in San Mateo, California), became an accountant. The younger, Harold Francis James (born 1881 in Berkshire, England; died 1957 in Calhoun, Illinois), studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he studied under the French painter and sculptor Jean-Paul Laurens (1838–1921); Harold became an artist, art writer and university teacher. Harold is described in Peter Hastings Falk's "Who Was Who in American Art, 1564-1975", published in 1999, and is also recorded in Susan Craig's "Biographical Directory of Kansas Artists Active Before 1945", published in 2006.