“In the name of the Great Head of the Church we, a little band of five, united together in a separate church organization, the beginning of great things we hope—the germ of the tree that shall overshadow the land. The lay members of this infant church were S. R. House, Mrs. Stephen Mattoon, and Mrs. Stephen Bush.” [Mr. Mattoon and Mr. Bush being clergymen were not eligible to membership in a local church.]
At the first communion of the new church, held on Sept. 30, a Chinese Christian was received:
“In the evening at a meeting of the Church Session Quasien Kieng, the native member of the A. B. C. F. M. mission church (received by Messrs. Johnson and Peet on January 7, 1844) was received into our membership on certificate of recommendation from the pastor, Rev. A. Hemmenway. An interesting occasion to us. A worthy brother, this Chinese disciple; may his wife and many others come in with and through him.”
This Chinese Christian, whose name is spelled variously in the doctor’s journal and elsewhere, was Kee-Eng Sinsay Quasien, who served as the first Chinese teacher in the boys’ school and who became the grandfather of Boon Itt, concerning whom more notice will appear later. Up to this time, so far as records show, there had been no genuine converts from among the Siamese in any of the missions. There had, however, been several from among the Chinese. Indeed when the king was urged to take action against the first missionaries he replied: “Let them alone; no one will give heed to them except the Chinese.” The first convert from among the Chinese sojourners in Siam was Boon Tai, who had come under the personal influence of Dr. Gutzlaff previous to 1831. A few others were converted under the teaching of transient missionaries, and then came Mr. Dean, who established the first church of Chinese.
THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC OF 1849
One day, in 1849, the startling news reached the mission compound that cholera had appeared in Bangkok. The plague spread very rapidly; almost simultaneously it appeared everywhere in the city. The very first notice of the presence of the pestilence that came to the doctor was the news that the Siamese printer connected with the Baptist mission had been stricken without any premonitory symptoms and died within a few hours.
“As may be imagined consternation seized upon all classes. The native doctors fled from their patients. Everywhere propitiatory offerings were made to the spirits, the people generally believing the pestilence to be caused by the invasion of an army of cruel malicious demons who had come invisibly to seize mankind and make them their slaves. And in accordance with this theory the preventative most relied on was a strand of cotton yarns, blessed by the Buddhist priests, which, tied about the necks or wrists, it was thought the invisible army could not pass. A cordon of such yarn hung looped from battlement to battlement entirely around the royal palace, a mile in circumference....
“Awakened at day break by a Chinaman in a floating house across the river firing off crackers to propitiate his god. Met a Chinaman well-dressed, carrying a square frame on which little banners, red and white, some rice and fruit, little new-made clay images of men and animals, with little rags around them, red peppers, betel leaf and nuts ready for chewing, the end of an old torch—all laid down at a place where a dozen other such offerings to the spirits were placed.”
With such preventives as the sole protection against the cholera it is no wonder that the plague spread like wildfire. It was no respecter of persons—a dowager in the palace, a prince of Cambodia, a wealthy Hindu merchant were victims like the most wretched natives. The mortality was so inclusive that in many a house there were more dead than living; and in some instances the remnant of a family would abandon the house with its horde of corpses. Many of the mission servants and members of their families were attacked, and some of these sent in great haste for Dr. House. From early morning, all through the day, far into the night he visited the sick.