Samuel Reynolds House of Siam, pioneer medical missionary, 1847-1876

by George Haws Feltus

THE BOY BOON ITT

Boon Tuan Boon Itt was born February 15, 1865, in the village of Bangpa, which was a Chinese settlement near Ratburi. After his mother removed to Bangkok with her children, Boon Itt and his younger brother Boon Yee entered the mission school and there began their primary education. Only three years after that, Dr. and Mrs. House resigned. When they were about to return home they arranged to take Boon with them and undertook to have him educated in America. At the same time the retiring missionaries agreed to supervise the education of another Siamese boy, Nai Kawn, at the request of his father.

Rev. J. A. Eakin, D.D., in his sketch of Boon Itt, gives this touching picture of the night before his departure:

“The warm clothing, so different from anything that he had been accustomed to wear, was all made and packed in his little box. He had taken leave of his teacher and the school. On the morrow he was to leave his native land. On that last night his mother visited him, and sitting together in their favorite place by the riverside, they talked long of the future. Years afterward, when he was a student of Theology, in a letter to his mother he referred to that night, and said that her farewell words of counsel had always remained in his mind, and had been a great help to him.”

The home of Dr. and Mrs. House was to be in Waterford, New York, and thither they brought their young charges. Boon early became imbued with the American idea of self-dependence. He sought to learn to do as American boys do. In vacation time he looked for jobs to earn money towards his own support. When Dr. and Mrs. House assumed the responsibility for his education, they supposed that their income would be sufficient to bear the expense; but with the failure of their investments a serious problem confronted them. Fortunately, Boon won his way into the hearts of the people, so that the Presbyterian Sunday school of Waterford undertook to make an annual contribution of seventy-five dollars, and continued this amount until his full course was finished. Individuals also assisted privately.

EDUCATION

The barrier of language of course had first to be removed. For this reason his studies were begun with private teaching. In the course of her visits to missionary societies, Mrs. House made an address at North Granville, New York, and there told of the boys they had brought to America to educate. This address, as will be observed in a letter of Boon’s that follows later, prompted a generous offer on the part of Mr. Wallace C. Willcox, principal of the military academy at that place, to give free tuition to Boon Itt, provided friends would care for his needs. This offer was gladly accepted, and in January, 1880, Boon and Kawn entered the academy.

In the fall, Mr. Willcox transferred his relations to the military school at Mohegan Lake, New York, and his personal interest in the two boys carried them with him, so that for that academic year Boon was at Mohegan. In the fall of 1881, he was sent to Williston Seminary, Northampton, Massachusetts, to prepare for college. There he distinguished himself for brightness of mind and fondness of athletics, particularly swimming—in which art every normal boy of Bangkok is an adept from childhood. Graduating at Williston, in the fall of 1885 he matriculated at Williams College. There he spent four years, pursuing the classical course, and graduated with the degree A.B. in 1889.

The college course finished, there came to him one of those severe tests of his consecration and high sense of duty that marked his life at intervals. Between medicine and the ministry he hesitated, but only to weigh in his mind which of the two professions would be the one in which he could render the greatest good to his native land. Of the need of medicine there could be no doubt; even a young man could perceive the advantage of modern medical science for a land where ignorance of the body and superstition were the allies to cause suffering, contagion and pestilence. He could well appreciate also the value of the gentle art of healing as a means of winning the people’s attention while others might preach the Gospel to them. It was no small tribute to the greater power of the ministry in his judgment, therefore, that he resolved to prepare himself for that profession because he deemed the Gospel itself the greatest need for his countrymen.

Having decided for the ministry he entered the Theological Seminary at Auburn, New York. There his grace of meekness, coupled with sterling worth, won for him a high place in the esteem of both his fellow students and the faculty. He had no ambition to be a popular leader, and yet in spite of his retiring disposition he was the center of a warm fellowship because of his high ideals. During the summer vacation of 1890 he served a parish at Bad Axe, Michigan, and in the next summer was the acting pastor at Bergen, New York. He graduated from the seminary in May, 1892, and on the eleventh of the same month was ordained to the Gospel ministry by the Presbytery of Rochester. In that year also he acquired American citizenship. While awaiting the matter of appointment to the field, he took a post-graduate course at Auburn, at the same time supplying the Presbyterian Church at Manlius, N. Y.