From the Archives: Trimbles in China

~ by Stuart Clarkson ~

Note: Chinese names in this article appear in Foochow Romanized, as in the original texts. This method of spelling Fuzhouese dialect was created by the missionaries of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, as opposed to pinyin, which is the official Chinese romanization for Standard Mandarin Chinese [in some instances given afterwards in brackets]

Lydia Amanda Trimble was born in Marlborough Township on 1 July 1863 to Irish immigrants William Trimble and Ann Jane Hill. The family had moved to North Gower by 1871, where the elder daughters Barbara and Mary married James Wallace and Alexander Callander. But in the later 1870s the parents and younger Trimble siblings moved to Essex County. Here the eldest son, William Hill Trimble, remained with his wife Cynthia Wright, and here their own son Frederick Homer Trimble was born in 1878.

The rest of the family, though, soon moved on once again, this time to Sioux City, Iowa, at a time when that city’s population was doubling every four years. The Trimbles became ensconced in local Methodist society, with son John Brownlee Trimble becoming a Methodist minister and benefactor of a local school, Morningside College. One of the younger daughters, Lydia, soon volunteered for the Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, going as a missionary to China in 1889 through the Society’s DesMoines Branch.

Her work began in the city of Foochow [Fuzhou], on the southeast coast of China, but soon she had been relocated to the nearby district of Hok Chiang [Fuqing]. The Annual Report of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church for 1892-3 stated:

Hok Chiang District. — Miss Trimble's removal from Foochow to the District has proved a great blessing, and the Day Schools and the Bible Women most remote from Ngu Cheng [Longtian] feel the current as it sweeps from that power house over spiritual wires. Neither pleasant surroundings nor physical comfort led to the selection of this wicked city as a centre of work, but because it was most accessible to other stations. A native house was rented, a little money expended to fit it for the Woman's School and home for the missionary, and there our dear sister ‘dwells with God for his work.’

Trimble, a true powerhouse, worked tirelessly in her new field of operations, except when called on to attend the Mission’s General Conference as a lay delegate for Foochow Conference in 1896. At the day school and eventually also a boarding school she established at Ngu Cheng, Trimble and her fellow missionaries taught students to read the Bible in their own language using Foochow Romanized, which transliterated Chinese logogrammic characters into the Latin alphabet of their anglophone teachers. Lydia’s missionary work was set amidst troubled times, and in an area that was at times also troubled – the North-western Christian Advocate reported in 1898 that the house where Trimble lived with the other missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. Main and Miss Allen, had been “attacked and fired into by a mob last winter.” All was made more difficult by a repeated lack of sufficient missionaries. The Gospel in All Lands reported in 1899 that, in Ngu Cheng in Hok Chiang District, “Trimble has been only resident missionary in that and Haitang District where there ought to be three missionaries.”

It seems Trimble was granted furlough in 1903. In the Official Minutes, Foochow Conference that year, Presiding Elder Ding Hieng Ngieu of Hok Chiang District stated: “We all earnestly hope that Miss Trimble will also soon return and take up her work here.” But Trimble had important work elsewhere, travelling first to her church’s 1904 General Conference in Los Angeles. There she requested the building of a college in Foochow. Then, back in Sioux City, she still did not rest but spent her time attending Morningside College. As it happened, her nephew Frederick, son of her elder brother William who had remained in Essex County, was also a student at the same school. His field was architecture and civil engineering. Likely with some encouragement from his aunt Lydia, Frederick travelled in 1905 upon graduating to Hinghua, just north of Foochow, on behalf of the Methodist Episcopal Church, bearing the distinction of serving as one of the first industrial missionaries there.

Lydia too returned to China, and the school she had requested, the first university for women in China was soon becoming a reality, though soon she was absent again on Conference business. The Official Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1908) state:

Both Miss Trimble and Miss Bartlett have done faithful work in the school of the Woman's Board here at Ngu-cheng during the year. Miss Trimble was elected lay delegate to the General Conference and was compelled to be absent from her work for several months, during which time Miss Bartlett has faithfully and energetically carried out the work formerly assigned to both.”

“The Woman's College buildings in Foochow promise soon to be a long hoped for reality. Meanwhile twentythree girls are taking college preparatory work, living in part of the Girls' School building. Miss Wallace, in charge of that department during the past year, mentions the joy it is to her to teach girls so entirely bent on the acquiring of knowledge. Miss Trimble, who has been appointed President of the college and is supervising the construction of the buildings, is also taking charge of the Girls' Boarding School ..."

Thus began in 1908 the Foochow College Preparatory of Foochow Women’s College, so named by Bishop W.S. Lewis, resident bishop in Foochow, a former President of Morningside College in Sioux City, who had been supporting Trimble’s vision even before obtaining his see in China. Note that Miss Wallace, who took charge of the college prep work, was none other than Lydia Ethel Wallace, daughter of Lydia Trimble’s eldest sister Barbara, from North Gower. Wallace had been named a candidate through the Baltimore Branch, as mentioned in the Missionary Society’s 1904 annual report. Indeed, Ethel’s brother James Hill Wallace had also gone to China as a missionary directly after graduating from the University of Toronto in 1903. So it seems that Lydia Trimble had accomplished much during her 1903-1904 furlough to encourage both family members and Sioux City’s elite to support her mission.

Meanwhile, in supervising the construction of the buildings, Trimble looked to her other nephew, Fred. The budding architect, while on furlough in Sioux City for his marriage, was formally named superintendent of construction for the project in 1909. He and Sioux City architect Wilford W. Beach began working together on the college building project before Trimble headed back to China with his new bride in time for both to be listed in the Directory of Protestant Missionaries in China, Japan & Corea for the Year 1910 under Hinghua. But by September 1911 Fred was in Foochow to set things in motion to prepare the site for laying the foundation for his sister’s college, though first to deal with some lingering concerns: there was a cemetery where building had been planned, and an underground cave beneath where the pillars were to be placed. Of the three planned buildings, the first two – Payne Hall, an administration building with classrooms, and Cranston Hall, a dormitory, both named for substantial donors – were done by 1914. Hwa Nan College – variously called the South China College for Women, the Methodist Episcopal College for Women, the Women’s Foreign Missionary Service Woman’s College – had finally been established, but not before a last obstacle: money had run out before Cranston Hall had been completed. This issue was resolved by Lydia’s brother back in Sioux City, Dr. James Brownlee Trimble, who mortgaged his farm to provide the necessary funds. After a hiatus, additional money was sought starting in 1921 for a third building, to be named Lydia Trimble Hall, with sod-turning in 1922 and completion in 1925.

It was at this time that Lydia Trimble stepped down from her presidency of the college, but she remained in China until her death in 1942. Her nephew Frederick Trimble had returned to the United States by 1915, due to illness and other matters. He went on to design more than 50 schools in Florida, including concept plans for Florida Southern College in Lakeland. Ethel Wallace served as Dean of Hwa Nan College until its transfer to Chinese leadership in 1927 but stayed on until 1948, later writing up its history, Hwa Nan College: The Woman's College of South China, for the United Board for Christian Colleges in China in 1956. She died in Ontario in 1963, predeceased by her brother, Major James Hill Wallace, OBE, who apart from military service during the First World War continued to work in China until the 1920s with his wife, poet Kathleen Montgomery Coates.

Bargain and sale by James Trimble and Lydia Ann Trimble, his wife, to Agnes Brown of part Lot 21, Concession 3 in the Township of North Gower, 1876. (Rideau Archives, MGR197-3-21)

One of the few Trimble documents at Rideau Archives is this deed for Lydia’s elder brother James Trimble and his wife, Lydia Ann Hill. Born soon after their marriage, it is possible that missionary Lydia Amanda Trimble was named for James’ wife. As was common among the Trimbles, James left for the West – in 1889, he took a homestead in Township 50, Alberta, later moving into Edmonton when his wife Lydia Ann arrived in 1891.

Sources: Janet Rice McCoy, “Woman’s College, WFMS, Foochow” United Methodist Church General Commission on Archives and History; Ethel Wallace, Hwa Nan College: The Woman's College of South China, United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1956; Provincial Archives of Alberta, “Lydia Amanda Trimble” and “James Andrew Trimble” authority records; Wikipedia, “Fred Trimble”; Lucy, “Kathleen Montgomery Wallace” Female Poets of the First World War [blog]; Torontoniensis 1905