The year 1845 witnessed quite a reduction in the number of the American missionaries in Siam. The Rev. Mr. Davenport and wife (now Mrs. Fanny Feudge) of the Baptist mission left for the United States, to return no more, and Dr. Jones, also, on a visit. The Rev. Charles Robinson and family of the A. B. C. F. M. also left Siam (Mr. R. to die at St. Helena on his passage home), while Mrs. Dr. Bradley died at Bangkok in the triumphs of faith after years of efficient and loving service for her Saviour—a most valuable helper in her husband’s work.
It was in this year that Prince Chow Fah Mongkut (Chow Fa Yai), who afterward became king, then head-priest of a royal monastery within the city-walls, invited one of the American missionaries, the Rev. Jesse Caswell, to become his private tutor. So anxious was this priest-prince for instruction that he offered an inducement which he knew would weigh heavily with a missionary—the use of a room in a building on the temple-grounds, where, after his hour for teaching was over, he could preach and distribute Christian tracts. The arrangement was made and carried out for over a year and a half. So much of the future of Siam in providence was to hinge on those hours of intimate intercourse between the faithful teacher and his illustrious and most diligent pupil that all the particulars are of interest. The prince was then about forty years of age—his teacher a graduate of Lane Theological Seminary, a member of the Presbytery of Cincinnati, and in the service of the A. B. C. F. M.
In 1846 the American Board, rightly deeming China proper a wider and more promising field for the labors of their Chinese-speaking missionaries, decided to give up their Chinese department in Siam, instructing Messrs. Johnson and Peet to proceed to China and establish a new mission at Fuh-Chow-fuh. With the close of the year came the Rev. Mr. Jenks to assist Mr. Goddard of the Baptist mission, only to leave, however, before the close of the next year, in consequence of the failure of Mrs. Jenks’s health.
In February, 1847, Dr. Bradley, with his three motherless children, left on a visit to the United States, his ship passing in the Gulf of Siam the vessel in which newly-appointed missionaries of the Presbyterian Board, Rev. Stephen Mattoon and wife and Samuel R. House, M. D., were on their way to recommence the mission-work of that Board in Siam, which had been so long discontinued.
These brethren had sailed from New York for China in the ship Grafton in July, 1846, arriving at Macao, after a five months’ voyage, on Christmas Day. No opportunity thence direct to Siam presenting, they were constrained to proceed viâ Singapore. There they were most hospitably entertained by the Rev. B. P. Keasberry, a missionary to the Malays, then of the London Missionary Society. Finding in the harbor a native-built trading-ship belonging to the king of Siam, commanded by a European, they secured a passage in it to Bangkok, which, after a tedious voyage of twenty-four days, they reached March 22, 1847, eight months after they left New York. The journey from New York to Bangkok can now be made by transcontinental railways and Pacific mail-steamers, or by English steamers and the Suez Canal, according as one goes west or east, in six or seven weeks only.
Upon arriving the new-comers were most cordially received by the brethren of the A. B. C. F. M. and the American Baptist mission, and welcomed to the homes of Messrs. Caswell and Hemenway, the only remaining members of the A. B. C. F. M., till the vacant houses on their premises could be prepared for their reception. They were soon visited by many of the nobles and princes, and took an early opportunity to pay their respects to the Praklang, Prince T. Mourfanoi (Chow Fah Noi), and his elder brother, T. Y. Chow Fah Mongkut, the prince-priest, at his residence in a beautiful monastery in the city. By both these princes they were most kindly received—by the last-named with marked regard, which they ever retained.
The tidings spreading that a new foreign physician had come to Siam, patients of every description and of all classes crowded for relief, till Dr. House was compelled to reopen the dispensary, which had long been sustained by Dr. Bradley in a floating-house moored in front of the mission premises. During the first eighteen months he had prescribed for three thousand one hundred and seventeen patients. Mr. Mattoon applied himself successfully to the study of the language, and soon entered upon the work of tract-distribution, visiting for this purpose the wats or Buddhist monasteries of the city, none being more ready to receive Christian books than the priests—or monks, rather—themselves.
In the ensuing cool season many tours were made with the brethren of other missions. Petchaburee, Ayuthia, Prabat and Petrui were visited, and everywhere they found a ready reception for the books and tracts they carried with them.
In 1848 the Rev. John Taylor Jones, D. D., returned with Mrs. S. S. Jones and Miss Harriet Morse, a missionary teacher, but Mr. Goddard of the same mission was obliged to remove to a more invigorating climate, and left for Ningpo, China. In September of this year the mission cause sustained an irreparable loss in the death of Jesse Caswell. He was a man of most earnest purpose and rare fitness for the missionary work. His qualifications as a teacher were appreciated by the Prince Chow Fah Mongkut, who chose him as his instructor in the English language and science, and derived from him, chiefly during the eighteen months’ continuous instruction he received, those enlarged and liberal ideas in government and religion which, when he succeeded to the throne, led him to open Siam to commerce and improvement. No wonder that after he became king he erected a handsome tomb over his esteemed teacher’s remains and sent to his widow in the United States a gift of one thousand dollars, and subsequently five hundred dollars more, as tokens of regard for his memory. In February, 1849, Mrs. Caswell and family returned to America.
Mr. Caswell’s death and Mr. Hemenway’s illness threw now upon Mr. Mattoon, though he had been but eighteen months in the field, the Sabbath preaching-service at the station and a tri-weekly service at a hired room used as a chapel in the bazaar. There were, too, many applicants for books daily at the houses of the missionaries, and they had to be instructed and supplied.