Warren was born on Sept. 17, 1877 in Lowell, Massachusetts. The handwritten Massachusetts town and vital records and birth records have Sept 19, but these are transcription errors. Warren put Sept 17 on his passport applications and in a letter home he mentions that “tomorrow is Sept 17, and I will be twenty-one.”
Warren was the oldest surviving child of Rev. Joseph Bartlett Seabury and Martha Daniels Mason. When he was 9 months old, he and his sister Helena Mason Seabury, who was a 18 months older, were both taken seriously ill. Warren survived but Helena died on August. 15, 1878.
From age 8 to 18 he lived in Dedham, MA. He had a fondness
for mechanics and purchase a lathe with his own money. He also installed a
telephone between his room and that of a friend in the neighborhood. He was
also a deeply passionate baseball fan and loved tennis.
After graduating from high school, he passed the
preliminaries for admission to Yale, but he decided to enroll at Hotchkiss, a
boarding school in Lakeville, CT. It was during this time that he felt a
calling to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a minister. Later, many
instructors and students of Hotchkiss followed Warren to China.
After Hotchkiss he attended Yale, graduating in 1900, and then Hartford Theological Seminary where he received a Bachelor of Divinity at Hartford in May 1903. He was offered missionary instruction in Europe but decided to take a final year at Yale, studying philosophy and comparative religions. A year later June 9, 1904 he graduated from Yale Graduate School with a Master of Arts. On the same day he was ordained at the First Church in Hartford, CT.
While at Yale his spiritual life further developed when he
started thinking about being a missionary. At this time there was a great
missionary fever gripping many American universities and Yale was at the forefront
with missionaries already established in China.
Another force was the Ecumenical missionary conference he
attended in New York in April of 1900:
“One April afternoon in the year 1900, three Yale Seniors, en route to the New York to attend the Ecumenical Foreign Missionary Conference were earnestly engage in conversation. Their proposition – the missionary work of the University concentrated under on the denominational Boards – was germinal but not new…The situation in Peking and the perils of the Boxer outbreak added to the impressiveness, the gravity, the pathos of the hour. With financial support from several Yale Seniors the Yale Missionary idea was crystallizing. With the Boxer massacres and recent martyrdom of Pitkin, a recent graduate of Yale, brought China to the forefront vs Africa.” (3)
Lawrence Thurston, Brownell Gage and Warren received their appointments, and they spent the summer of 1904 preparing and gathering furniture, tools, library books, clothing, etc. They traveled cross country to San Francisco, stopping at various friend’s homes and preaching along the way. On Oct. 1 they sailed from San Francisco on the Gaelic with a stop off in Hawaii. The ship landed in Yokohama, where he left the ship and took a train to Kyoto. He then boarded the steamer at Kobe and continued his journey to Shanghai. He wrote, “At last we reached our first Chinese city, Shanghai, but it was found to be strangely Western.” (2) He was not impressed with the city and left a week later after they bought the supplies they needed.
They settled in Hankow for the
winter with Mr. and Mrs. Brownell Gage, who made a pleasant home for him. His letters
during this period were full of good cheer and descriptions of the ways and
characteristics of the Chinese. He is also spending this time learning the
language. “Yesterday, after six hours’ work on the language, I felt as if I
never wanted to see another Chinese character. They all seemed like so many
chocolate creams left out in the rain.” (2)
On Feb 15, 1905 Warren was sent to
Changsha (population 192,000) in the Hunan province arriving on Feb 19 and Gage would follow. At the time Hunan was particularly against missionaries.
The local Hunan newspapers were very hostile to missionaries during the Boxer
Rebellion (3) fearing that the introduction of the religion of the West would
destroy the Chinese ideals of filial piety and patriotism. Warren was being sent
to an area that had an anti-foreign spirit, and refused all alliance with the
non-Chinese world, but recently attitude was changing there, and several
missionary societies were established.
The first few months he stayed
with Mr. & Mrs. Gotteberg of the Norwegian mission while looking for supplies
and a building not an easy task as the locals would not sell to foreigners.
In early March he was invited by the Changsha Board of Education to teach English at the Bright Virtue School. While he was working at the school, he lived with Mr. Greenwell Fletcher, British Commissioner of Customs. He also became friends with Mr. A.J. Flaherty, the British Consul whom he played tennis with (Warren was an athletic person and enjoyed playing tennis}.
In May he made his first visit to
Kuling for a conference with his associates Gage and Dr. Hume. After the
meeting Gage and his wife returned to America, Hume remained in Kuling and
Warren returned to Changsha.
By this time, they realized it was
impractical to secure land for the college building, so he turned his attention
to rent temporary quarters in the city. Early in August 1906 Hume arrived from
Kuling and together they found a house to rent for use as a hospital dispensary.
By August 19 they were able to purchase a house for the school. The purpose of
the school was to provide university education to young men. The school was
opened on Nov 16 with some 20 students. At the end of the academic year there
were 30 boys at the school.
In the early part of 1907, he made this third journey into
the heart of the country, this time up the Yuen River to Chenchow in the company
of an old college friend.
In 1907 Warren was appointed to represent the Mission at the
Centennial Conference in Shanghai. He wrote home gushing about how pleasurable
the conference was and the wonders of all the shops, automobiles, in Shanghai
(apparently his time in the country changed his tune about the city). While
there he stayed at the British Consul and met many noted missionaries and many
friends from America. He returned after a week.
During this time, the school was flourishing and the future
looked bright, he even joked in a letter home about finding a wife because they
were paid more! He was thinking also of returning later to Yale to get his PhD
and a projected course of philosophical study, particularly the Sung
Philosophy. He was also envisioning a Young Men’s Christian Association and
Social Settlement as betterment of the young manhood of his adopted city—a Chinese
Yale.
During the hot summer many people went up into the mountains
to Kuling. In the past he did not but on the morning of July 10, 1907 he decided
the go and left Changsha for Kuling. He had reached a juncture in his work that
he felt he could be away for a while and school would not suffer. He spent 13
days in Kuling in the company of Hume, Gage, and others as guest of Mr. &
Mrs. Lovell.
On Sunday evening July 28, they sang around the piano, and
at half-past nine he retired to write his weekly letter home. When he finished,
he placed it on the mantel to be posted the next morning after they were to
leave on an excursion to “White Deer College.”
The letter was full of information about a house that he
decided to purchase. He writes, “In getting a house of course I am thinking
that I can then have a place for you when you come out to see me. Then, if I do
not rent it, I can have friends with me, ask some married people to run the
house and take me in, or I can have a pleasant company of my own choosing. I am
as enthusiastic as a boy over the prospect of a new possession. We shall see! I
hope that it can be. With much love to all and with many apologies for being
your son and brother!” (2)
The next morning, they were up at 5 a.m. The day started with a beautiful sunrise but when
they got to the Nankang pass they were surrounded by clouds and mist and almost
turned back. But the clouds rose, and they could see sunlight in the horizon,
so they continued down the mountain. They were frequently rained on and had to
ford streams, but they continued with high spirits. After visiting the college,
the left to return around 12:30 p.m.
As his friend Brownell Gage reported, “As we started back, I
turned and said to Warren: ‘Won’t it be good to get back to the swimming pool
and have a plunge? He answered that he did not know whether he would go in or
not. He had previously told Hume that he could swim forty or fifty yards. I
knew of a perfectly safe pool with a gravel bottom, in a small canyon of the
mountain stream which our path followed. When we got to the place…I turned
aside from the path to look for the way to this pool.” (2)
In dry weather the pool was shallow but on this day the
stream and the cascade were swollen from the rain and the current was running swiftly.
Gage later reported that Warren slipped on a large flat rock
fell in and in a moment was carried by the stream over the falls in a sitting
position. He came up, struck out two or three strokes and then went under
again. Hume had no chance to reach the pool, and besides could not swim, Mann dove
over the rock into the pool. He tried to get into the upper pool but was washed
down but after a few tries he finally made it. But the current was too strong for
him in the upper pool, He was carried around by the circling currents, sucked
down a whirlpool and never came up.
Hume and Kemp returned with a rope and Kemp, with the rope
around him, dove into the pool below but he also could not get into the upper
pool which grew worse with continued rain. After nearly 2 hours they gave up
hope and Kemp went up the mountain to Kuling to get help. He came back with 10
people, dry clothes, and food. A large party with ladders, ropes and grappling
hooks searched and four hours later found Warren and then Mann. Both the bodies
were carried up the mountain on stretchers and were buried together the next morning
after a beautiful outdoor service in Kuling.
WARREN SEABURY AND ARTHUR MANN
(“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.”)
They two went down this hills through a stormy dawn
With joyous comrades, laughing in the mist,
Cleaving the windy fog before their steps,
And holding converse as they downward fared.The storm fog drenched their footing on the stones
The rains came roaring down the mountain streams,
The torrent snatched them, -- and they were no more.Their souls walked forth across the morning heights,
And past the peaks and up beyond the clouds;
So, while their brethren sought their bodies drowned,
That loving hands might tomb them in the hills,
Christ met them all amazed – in Paradise.
On Sept 21 there was a memorial service for him held at the
First Congregational Church of Wellesley Hills and large number of his friends
attended. The ushers were classmates and old-time friends. At the front of the
pulpit were two wreaths, bearing the letters A.S.M and W.B.S. There were many
speakers from Yale and the missionary world that spoke of his dedication, stewardship,
and sense of humor. His father wrote that “his real charm lay in the quiet
symmetry of all his gifts. His sense of humor, vivid as it was, blended with
his promptness to see and feel the insistence of duty, the responsibility of
stewardship, the realities of the future.” (2) A memorial stone was erected in Woodlawn Cemetery in Wellesley, MA where his family is buried.
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| Yale Obituary |
Bishop Root’s words at the memorial service spoke about his capacity for friendship:
“The most precious thing about Seabury’s life, to those who knew him in China, is the friendship he called out from the Chinese. He learned the language, I think, distinctly better than most young missionaries learn it; but there was something besides his ability to speak their language which gave him access to the hearts of the Chinese. It has been most truly said that Orientals think a great deal more about what you do than about what you say. They judge what you mean not by your words but by your deeds, and it was the constant manifestation of intelligent sympathy and kindliness, in all his relations, which won for Seabury the confidence of the Chinese.”
Warren’s many letter home are housed in the Archives at Yale and the school that Seabury founded is still going strong,
Here are some links describing the history of the school:
https://www.yalechina.org/who-we-are (scroll to the bottom of this page to read its history)
Yale and China's Century Old Partnership
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| Yale Alumni Weekly 1909 |
(1) Plymouth Church Congregational: What is the Congregational Way? https://www.plymouth-church.net/congregationalway.html
(2) Seabury, J. B. (1909). The Vision of a Short Life: A Memorial of Warren Bartlett Seabury, One of the Founders of the Yale Mission College in China .... United States: Printed at the Riverside Press. https://www.familysearch.org/
(3) Speer, R. E. (1912). Men who Were Found Faithful. Ireland: Fleming H. Revel Company. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Men_who_Were_Found_Faithful/yQzcAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
(4) The Boxer Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
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