Title: Irenaeus Atwood Family Papers, 1877-1968, n.d.

ID: RG 30/373

Extent: 0.3 Linear Feet

Predominant Dates: 1877-1910

Irenaeus Atwood, born 4 December 1850 in Lake Mills, Wisconsin, became a crucial contributor to Oberlin College’s history in China with his work as an member of the 1882 “China Band” and later diplomatic efforts to settle missionary claims after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. A son of Kelly Atwood and MaryAnn Kean, he first obtained his B.A. from Ripon College in 1878. After this initial academic degree, he went on to attend the Oberlin Theological in 1878 and graduated in 1881. At that time, he made his first journey to China as a member of the Oberlin “China Band,” a missionary group that established schools, refuges, and religious centers in the Shansi region.

Atwood married Annette Williams on 25 December 1877. They established a family in the midst of an itinerant lifestyle, in which Annette and their children, Edward, Mabel, and Paul, were compelled by violence or disease in China to remain in the United States while Irenaeus returned to continue his missionary work. All three children had the opportunity to spend some time living and studying in China over the courses of their lives, as well as obtaining some of their education and living amongst family members in the United States. Atwood, meanwhile, pursued missionary work in China continuously until increasing deafness resulted in his return to the U.S. shortly before the Boxer Rebellion.

Atwood’s activities as a missionary worker formed the basis for his entire career, as well as establishing a life that would be spent largely in China, away from his native United States. During a furlough in the United States, Irenaeus Atwood studied to obtain his medical degree from Rush College in 1888. He returned to China as a medical missionary, helping to address a want for medical professionals that, according to notes written by his daughter Mabel[1], he had identified during his first period of work.

The Boxer Rebellion, which took place in 1900, had disastrous implications for the Oberlin Missionaries of Shansi. As violence spread across the northern regions of China, members of the “Oberlin Band” who remained in the area were killed in mob activities. Soon after the rebellion subsided, Atwood returned to China to engage diplomatically in the effort to have the bodies of missionaries exhumed and reburied according to the standards deemed appropriate to American Christian mission workers. He successfully negotiated this transaction, which resulted not only in their reburial but also in the building of monuments to their deaths. The result of further diplomatic negotiation was the establishment of new missions in the area, and this final success marked one of the pinnacles of Atwood’s career. He received a button of the third rank from the Emperor of China in recognition of his services in settling missionary claims, and perhaps even more remarkably, Atwood accomplished these feats of negotiation almost entirely on his own. His work demanded that he travel widely in China for prolonged periods of time following the Boxer Rebellion, and he remained in a degree of peril. To ensure that his safety be preserved, Atwood received an armed consort provided by American and other foreign forces active in the area.

Irenaeus Atwood remained in China working for missionary reparations until ill health and old age forced his return to the United States. The last part of his life was spent in the Puget Sound Sanitarium in Tacoma, Washington, ending with his death in Milton, Washington, on 1 October 1913. Although he did produce several published and unpublished writings, including “Breezes from the Flowery Kingdom”(1900) and “The Light of Asia vs. the Light of the World” (1910), his legacy lay almost completely in the tangible evidence he left in China: the memorials and new-founded missions he negotiated to establish.

Sources Consulted

Student File of Irenaeus J. Atwood, Student Files, OCA.

Biographical notes of Mabel Atwood, located within the Irenaeus J. Atwood and Atwood Family Papers.

[1] This information was drawn from brief biographical notes by Mabel Atwood, included in the collection under Series V, Subseries 1: Materials Relating to the Atwood Family.

Author: Tyler Cassidy-Heacock

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Languages of Materials

Administrative Information

Scope and Contents:

The papers of Irenaeus J. Atwood and the Atwood family represent a compilation of personal items and writings that reflect the inextricable involvement of their lives with the Oberlin Shansi Mission in China. The collection includes correspondence, printed matter, photographs, and miscellaneous materials and an artifact collected predominantly by Irenaeus Atwood and his daughter, Mabel. The correspondence series is limited in scope, containing only four letters, as are the photographs, of which there are five; however, these materials provide evidence of the Atwood family’s relationship to missionary life in China by providing images of family members both in China and in the United States, and by exemplifying the kind of correspondence they carried on with friends and family.

The printed matter, writings of Irenaeus Atwood, and miscellaneous materials, artifact, and writings are diverse selections of the family’s belongings and provide some evidence of what was most important to them. Printed materials include those intended for missionary workers, such as the Handbook for Missions and Missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of 1901, as well as an apparently later pamphlet that includes an image of Irenaeus Atwood himself (Going on Furlo, by Mary Williams Hemingway). The miscellaneous artifact and materials include an illustrated banner, transcribed song, and pocketbook that originate in China, and give tangible examples of mission life in the Shansi region.

Finally, the miscellaneous materials also include the written recollections of Mabel Atwood, briefly detailing her father’s life as she experienced it firsthand. The collection does not provide complete biographical materials on Irenaeus Atwood, nor does it give detailed information in the form of correspondence or writings on daily missionary life. It does, however, provide context, in the form of important family possessions, for the story of Atwood’s success as an Oberlin missionary and diplomatic negotiator in Shansi Province, China.

The papers have been arranged in the following series and subseries:

Series I. Correspondence, 1882, 1904, 1906, 1909 (4 folders)

The correspondence of Irenaeus Atwood and the Atwood family is divided into two subseries: the first consists of a single detailed letter written by Atwood to his brothers and sisters during his Chinese journey of 1882, while the second subseries includes three letters received by Mabel Atwood, daughter of Irenaeus, from family and friends.

Series II. Printed Matter, c. 1877, 1895, 1901, n.d. (4 folders)

Printed Matter of the Atwood collection includes four disparate items apparently owned by family members. Each pertains to some aspect of the missionary experience, such as The Christian Minister’s Affectionate Advice to a Married Couple by Rev. James Bean (bearing an inscription of the marriage date of Irenaeus Atwood and Annette Williams) and the Handbook for Missions and Missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1901), among whose pages are tucked pieces of embroidery and floral cutouts. The series also includes a Chinese Hymnal and the pamphlet Going on Furlo by Mary Williams Hemingway, the latter of which includes reference to and a picture of Irenaeus Atwood.

Series III. Writings of Irenaeus Atwood, 1900, 1910, n.d. (3 folders)

Included in this series are one published work, Breezes from the Flowery Kingdom: Notes and Incidents connected with Missionary Work in Shansi (1900), and two handwritten unpublished manuscripts, Chinese Proverbs (n.d.) and The Light of Asia vs. the Light of the World (1910). The writings of Irenaeus Atwood concern his experience as a missionary.

Series IV. Photographs, 1905–06, 1968, n.d. (1 folder)

The photographic series includes two undated portraits of Irenaeus Atwood, one with his wife and son Paul, and the other in “Mandarin costume.” Also included are a February 1906 photograph of Annette Atwood and Adelaide Hemingway and a winter 1905–6 scene of a house among snowdrifts. A 1968 photograph of “Ray Atwood in Grandpa’s Robe” is also included.

Series V. Miscellaneous, 1884, n.d. (7 folders)

The miscellaneous materials in the collection have been subdivided into two broad subsections: Materials Relating to the Atwood Family, and Chinese Artifact and Materials. Materials relating to the family include the student book of Mabel Atwood, used during her time studying at Miss Jewell’s school in China, and a folder of Mabel Atwood’s miscellaneous biographical notes and recollections as well as a letter to her by an old friend, late in their lives. This subseries also includes the official 1884 permit issued to Irenaeus Atwood allowing him to travel freely in China. The Chinese artifact and materials are largely undated and include such diverse holdings as a colored illustration of Kitchen Gods, an English transcription of the lyrics to the song, “The Lao Hsi Erh,” a set of Chinese characters on small cards, and a leather pocketbook with Chinese characters.

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