wfn.org | Missionary stories receive new life on microfilm

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 5, 1999	News media contact: Joretta Purdue*(202)546-8722*Washington
10-71B{251}

By United Methodist News Service

Long-gone missionaries come to life through their own writings in a recently
completed $100,000 project of the United Methodist Church's archival agency.

More than a century of correspondence between the overseas missionaries and
their sponsor agencies has been transferred to microfilm. The accounts,
which began in 1846, were primarily the reports of missionaries sent by the
Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The
final 10 years of the collection - through 1949 - were the reports from
missionaries of the Methodist Church.

The correspondence describes the schools, clinics and congregations founded
and nourished by the missionaries. Many early letters are very informative
about the missionaries' lives and times, said L. Dale Patterson, archivist
and records administrator for the United Methodist Commission on Archives
and History in Madison, N.J.

A few paragraphs of reporting are often followed by pages of description of
the people, customs and geography, Patterson said, marveling. "The
missionaries were fascinated with the world around them." He speculated that
this was probably their first encounter with a different culture.

This kind of descriptive writing was especially true of the bulk of the
correspondence, which comes from the early decades of this century, he said.
In the 1930s and '40s, the reports became more focused on job-related
activities.

"The earlier writings have a really delightful character to them," he said.
He recalled a medical missionary in China who often described her patients
and who seemed especially touched by the malnourished children she treated.

Most of the missionaries wrote at least quarterly, but letters became more
frequent when they conveyed news of a disaster, such as a major flood.  The
missionaries also were affected by political upheavals like the occupation
of Korea by Japan in 1910, Patterson noted.

Converting 188 cubic feet of files into 694 reels of microfilm was a large
task, he said. Or to put it another way, he said, if one could stack
thousands of sheets of paper - some of it onionskin or carbon tissues - to a
height of almost 200 feet, that is what was processed. Each resulting image
represents a page, usually in long-hand writing, and occupies about an inch
on a 100-foot microfilm reel.

The missionary file series index has been updated to tell the researcher
which reels to look at. Reader-printers can provide researchers with a
printout of pages desired.

"From our perspective, this is really necessary preservation," Patterson
said. These are among the most used records in the United Methodist
archives, and the paper is in danger of disintegrating in spite of other
preservation efforts, he said. The microfilm is supposed to last for 500
years, he added.

More modern technology, such as CD-ROM, was not used because it is changing
so fast that the material could be unreadable after a short period.
Microfilm can be accessed by relatively primitive means for centuries,
Patterson explained.

The archives have a wide range of users from all over the world, who are
often seeking information about secular life, he said. Some are looking for
mention of a relative to fill out a genealogy. Graduate students and
scholars look at the work of the missionaries or the effect of their work.

Last year, a scholar came from India specifically to learn about schools in
a small province of his country. When a woman who had been educated by
Methodists became the wife of the rajah around 1920, she was allowed to
invite missionaries to establish schools in the area.

The researcher wanted to learn as much as he could about the educational
structure and its effect. He was overjoyed to learn the woman's name and to
see a wedding photograph, neatly labeled, from another part of the archives.
Because all the documents he had searched in India and England had referred
to her simply as the wife of the rajah, the researcher had given up hope of
ever learning the name of the person to whom that part of India owed its
educational system, Patterson said.

The $100,000 price tag for the microfilming came out of the commission's
budget, but it took about four years to accumulate enough money so that the
whole missionary file series could be processed at one time. Doing the whole
series at once was cheaper, and documents were less likely to get lost or
mixed up, Patterson said. Most of the series was away from the archives only
during the last six months of 1998.

The commission plans to offer copies of the microfilm for sale to other
research facilities through a company that works with the Library of
Congress, Patterson said. The small income from sales will be put into a
preservation fund. 
# # #

______________
United Methodist News Service
http://www.umc.org/umns/
newsdesk@umcom.umc.org
(615)742-5472