Francis Marion Price Papers, 1888-1937, n.d.
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Administrative/Biographical History
Francis Marion Price was born in Richland, Indiana on December 9, 1850 to Daniel Price and Sarah Ann Stewart Price. He received the A.B. from Oberlin College in 1882, and the Bachelor of Divinity from the Oberlin Theological Seminary in 1883.
Price married Sarah Jane Freeborn on January 2, 1872. She was enrolled at Oberlin in 1882-83. They had six children: Martha Ann (b. 1872, studied at Oberlin with the class of 1894), Alice Fairchild (b. 1879), Leila Frances (b. 1882, died in China, 1884), Helen Stewart (b. 1885, studied at Mills College), William Christie (born in Caroline Islands, January 1896, died September 1896), and Agnes (born April 1897, died September 1897). None of the children graduated with a degree.
Francis Price began his missionary service at Fenchow, China in the Shansi Mission in 1883. Two brief periods in Fenchow, summing up to four years, were each terminated for his wife’s health reasons. For a time they lived in Los Angeles before the American Board offered a post of missionary service in Micronesia to the Prices, which they accepted in 1894. Price took a short training course in medicine for the sake of a fuller measure of service.
Francis’s brother Charles, a graduate of the Oberlin Theological Seminary in 1889, served as a missionary in China with his wife Eva beginning in September of 1889. They brought their two sons, who both later died of disease. A daughter, Florence, was born in China in 1893. On August 15, 1900, Charles, Eva, and their daughter Florence were murdered in Fen-cho-fu by government soldiers during the Boxer Rebellion.
During this time Francis Price worked to develop a written language in Guam and the South Sea Islands, translating the Bible and other works into the Chamorro language. He also ministered to the sick, and provided pastoral care to the Chamorro people exposed to self-seeking traders. In 1907 they returned to the United States, and during 1907-08 Price served as Pastor of the Park Church, Berkeley, California. In 1909 he was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the California Oriental Mission.
Price wanted to return to China, and in 1911 he worked for the Soth Chihli Mission (Protestant), but after a year he sought out the American Board station in Northern China and secured work in the Paotingfu field. He worked there from 1912 to 1926, except for a furlough year in 1918-19. Sarah Jane Price died on August 2, 1916. On September 18, 1918 he married Mrs. Jennie Martabel Reeves, mother of Mrs. Sherwood Moran of the American Board station at Osaka, Japan. She joined him in his work until their retirement. For several years he toured widely and taught in nature and workers’ training classes; his foremost contribution was to the students in the Military Academy outside the East Gate of Paoting, where Chiang Kai-shek graduated and where many of the high officers of China were then in training.
After retiring from the missionary field Francis Price was Pastor Emeritus of the Park Congregational Church in Berkeley, and then joined the First Congregational Church, Oakland. He died on September 3, 1937 after a long illness at his home in Berkeley, California.
Sources Consulted
Student file of Francis Marion Price, RG 28/3.
Francis Marion Price Papers, RG 30/395.
Eva J. Price Papers, RG 30/274.
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative InformationEva J. Price Papers, RG 30/274.
Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association Records, RG 15.
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.
The Francis Price Papers make up a small collection arranged into six series: I. Correspondence; II. Diary and Journal; III. Printed Matter; IV. Photograph Album; V. Scrapbook; and VI. Artifacts. None of these series holds extensive material, and together they present a limited picture of the life and work of Francis Price. The most interesting item resides in Series II, a typescript of letters by his sister-in-law Eva J. Price from June 28 to July 1 of 1900, just before the family was murdered during the Boxer Rebellion. These were published in China Journal, 1889-1900: An American Missionary Family during the Boxer Rebellion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989).
The incomplete photograph album in Series IV holds five photographs, taken in Micronesia during Price’s service there in the 1890s. Among the printed matter in Series III resides a catechism in the Ruk (Chomorro) language published in 1888. Price translated the Bible into Chomorro during his time in Guam and Micronesia.