Dr. Abeel reached Singapore just as Mr. Tomlin was on the eve of embarking on a second visit to Bangkok, and arrived with him in Siam on June 30, 1831, a few days after Mr. Gutzlaff, disheartened by the death of his devoted wife, had sailed away in a native junk for Tientsin on the first of his memorable voyages of missionary exploration up the coast of China. He had been in Siam nearly three years in all, and had baptized one Chinese convert, whose name was Boontai.
The new-comers found the people eager for the books and medicines they had brought, and they labored faithfully for the good of the many Siamese and Chinese of high and low degree who came to visit them. In six months, however, Mr. Tomlin was called away, and Dr. Abeel also was obliged to leave Siam on a trip to Singapore to recruit his impaired health. Returning to Siam, he labored on till November 5, 1832, when continued ill-health drove him finally from the field.
Just two months before this the Rev. John Taylor Jones, who had been appointed a missionary to Siam by his American Baptist missionary associates in Burmah, to whom also Messrs. Gutzlaff and Tomlin had written, left Maulmain, where he had been stationed, for Singapore, on his way with his family to his new field. Delayed at that port, he did not arrive in Siam till March 25, 1833. Mr. Jones had been designated specially to the Siamese, but took supervision at once of the little company of Chinese worshipers Dr. Abeel and others had gathered, and in December baptized three of them. His Board at home approved the step Mr. Jones had taken, and determined to sustain the new mission, which thus proved to be the first permanently established in Siam.
The next to arrive in the field were two missionaries of the American Board, Messrs. Johnson and Robinson, who, with their wives, had embarked at Boston June 11, 1833, but, detained nine weary months in Singapore for a vessel to Siam, did not reach Bangkok till July 25, 1834, having been more than a year on their way. Mr. Johnson entered at once upon active labors for the Chinese, and Mr. Robinson for the Siamese, part of the population.
During the summer of 1834 the Rev. William Dean and his wife, who had been appointed by the American Baptist Board missionaries to the Chinese of Siam—their first missionaries, in fact, to any speaking the Chinese language—and Daniel B. Bradley, M. D., and wife, whom the American Board sent out to reinforce their mission to the Siamese, sailed from Boston for Singapore. While delayed at Singapore, Mrs. Dean was removed by death, and it was not till July 18, twelve months after leaving Boston, that Drs. Dean and Bradley, with Mrs. Bradley, reached their destined field.
Dr. Bradley soon opened a medical dispensary, and entered with zeal, faith and energy, which neither illness nor tropical heat nor any discouragement could abate, upon a course of medical and preaching, printing, writing and translating labors for the good of the Siamese, which ceased not till he resigned his breath in June, 1873—thirty-eight years after. Dr. Dean devoted himself to the instruction of the Chinese that thronged the city—a labor of Christian love which this venerable first apostle of the Baptist Church to the Chinese is still (1884) prosecuting in that same heathen city. In December, 1835, he baptized three new converts.
Both missions were now in efficient working order, with each its Chinese department as well as its Siamese, the Baptist mission laboring among the Chinese that spoke the Tachew dialect, who were emigrants from the Swatow district of the Canton province, while the A. B. C. F. M.’s mission looked after those that spoke the Hokien or Amoy dialect—different from that used by the Swatow people, and hardly intelligible to them.
The medical services of the missionaries and their medicines, and the Christian tracts and books they distributed without money and without price, were eagerly sought, and there was free access to the people in their streets, homes, and temples even, for making known the new religion; but none seemed savingly impressed—none of the Siamese. Indeed, while the protracted reign of the bigoted and imperious king who was on the throne when missions were established in Siam continued, it would seem no native could be brought even to entertain the question of forsaking the religion of the land, such was the dread of the king’s wrath and of the stripes, imprisonment, torture, death itself perhaps, that might be the fate of a convert.
The Chinese settlers in Siam were allowed more freedom of conscience; the displeasure of their kinsmen was all they would have to fear from change of religion. So Dr. Dean had the happiness of seeing the number of Chinese believers increase, till in 1837 a church was organized—the first church of Protestant Chinese Christians that was ever gathered in the East. To this, by 1848, sixty names had been added at different times. Mr. Johnson too, of the American Board’s mission, had the pleasure of baptizing his Chinese teacher in 1838, and in 1844 another of his teachers, Quaking, a Chinese of very respectable literary attainments.
Meanwhile, all labored on in hope. Reinforcements were sent from time to time to each mission. To the Baptist came, July, 1836, the Rev. Mr. Davenport and wife and Mr. and Mrs. Reid—Mr. Reid, alas! to die of dysentery in a little over a year. With these brethren came a printing-press. A printing-press was sent out to the American mission also the next year, so that both were now fully equipped for a most important branch of mission-work among this nation of readers. Before the year (1836) came to a close the first tract was printed, containing an account of the giving of the Law, a summary of the Ten Commandments, a short prayer and a few hymns. This is supposed to be the first printing ever executed in Siam. They had also secured more comfortable quarters on the west bank of the river, in the heart of the city, in houses built for them and leased to them by the Praklang, the minister of foreign affairs.