Administrative/Biographical History
Eva Jane Keasey, daughter of Samuel H. and Sarah H. Keasey of Altoona, Iowa, was born in 1855 in Constantine, Michigan. She married Charles Wesley Price (born 1847 in Richland, Indiana) on February 3, 1873. The couple moved to Oberlin in 1883 or 1884 for Charles’ study at the Oberlin Theological Seminary for 5 ½ years, while Eva attended the Oberlin Academy in 1884-85. Charles graduated with a theology degree in 1889, and was ordained that year in Oberlin.
Charles Price was encouraged at Oberlin to work as a missionary in China for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to the Shansi mission, along with others known as the Oberlin China Band. The Price family departed for China on Sept. 10, 1889 with their sons Stewart, 4, and Donald, 7 months old. Donald died of disease in 1892. In 1897 Stewart died of diabetes at age 12. A daughter, Florence, was born in China in 1893. Charles worked as the head of the school at Fen-cho-fu.
Eva corresponded frequently with her family in Iowa, and when the Boxer Rebellion prevented letters from being exchanged in 1899-1900, she kept a journal of their experiences. On August 15, 1900, Charles, Eva, and their daughter Florence were murdered in Fen-cho-fu by government soldiers who had promised to escort them to safety. A memorial arch was erected on the Oberlin College campus in 1903, where the names of those who had attended or graduated from Oberlin and were killed in the Boxer Rebellion, including those of Eve, Charles and Florence Price, were inscribed.
Three of Eva’s grandnieces compiled her letters and journal for the book China Journal, 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family During the Boxer Rebellion (Scribners, 1989).
Sources Consulted
Student file of Charles Wesley Price, RG 28.
Student file of Eva J. Price, RG 28.
Ken Fuson, “Journal Traces the Life of Chinese Missionary,” Commercial News (Danville, IL), 1 October 1989.
Roland Baumann and Carol Jacobs, “The Memorial Arch: An Unfolding Story,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Spring 1991.
Price, Eva Jane. China Journal, 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family During the Boxer Rebellion (New York: Scribners, 1989). http://obis.oberlin.edu/record=b1459017~S4
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationOberlin Shansi Memorial Association Records, RG 15.
Papers of Oberlin College President Henry Churchill King (RG 2/6), 1873-1934.
Papers of Lydia Lord Davis (RG 30/80), 1862-1944; Florence Fitch (RG 30/37), 1807-1951; Alice Moon Williams (RG 30/58), 1883-1952; and Francis Marion Price (RG 30/395).
Oberlin Band of Student Volunteers for Foreign Missions (RG 19/3/1), 1886-1927.
See also the Archives guide to Missionary Records.
China Journal, 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family during the Boxer Rebellion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989).
See also “Shansi: Oberlin and Asia,” a digital collection published in 2012 at http://www.oberlin.edu/library/digital/shansi/index.html.
