1900 - Mary Huston

August 11, 1900

Zezhou, Shanxi

Mary Huston.

One member of the group of 14 missionaries and children who attempted to reach safety in Wuhan was Mary Elizabeth Huston from Pennsylvania in the United States. Born in 1866, Mary was convicted of her sin and believed in Christ at the age of eight. It was not until she was 13, however, that she fully surrendered to the claims of Christ and determined to follow him wholeheartedly. She was a member of a church she later described as “cold and dead,” and consequently her spiritual life declined until she entered the Gospel Training School at Abilene, Kansas, at the age of 28. One of her classmates was Alice Troyer (later Alice Young), who was also martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. Huston sailed for China in December 1895 as a member of the China Inland Mission.

Initially, Huston was stationed at Lu’an (now Changzhi) in Shanxi Province, before being paired together with Hattie Rice by the China Inland Mission and assigned to work at an opium refuge in Lucheng. The duo soon became the closest of friends. It was said that their friendship

“ripened more and more, and became ever increasingly helpful to each. Through varying changes of station life, these two sisters went on in their service, sometimes in trial and sometimes in more open blessing, but always in the joy of the Lord.”[1]

When Mary Huston and the other missionaries boarded their carts in their daring bid to flee the advancing Boxers, many of the Chinese Christians at Lucheng begged them not to go, saying, “Stay and we will die with you here, we will not deny the Lord.”[2] On July 12th Hattie Rice collapsed from exhaustion. A crazed mob spitefully ran a cart over her naked body, while Mary courageously tried to defend her friend from the frenzied crowd. When Hattie died later that day, Mary Huston and the other missionaries were in a state of shock and despair, yet somehow they kept moving. Because of the chaos Mary got separated from the other fleeing missionaries. Part of her brain was exposed from a bashing received at the time of Hattie’s death. When the other missionaries arrived at Zezhou they pleaded with the magistrate to send a cart back to find Mary. Days later the cart returned with the body of Hattie Rice, and a severely wounded and ill Mary Huston. The missionaries tried to help their co-worker by protecting her from the sun, but they knew it was no use. One eyewitness said that Huston,

“had been very severely beaten, and had some terrible wounds, but she suffered very little then. She became very feverish, and asked me to call some of the others and have prayer with her, which she did, but none of us thought she was so near her end…. I went and found death written on her face. We had a little more prayer together, and soon she passed away without a word.”[3]

Mary Huston and Hattie Rice travelling by cart in 1900, a short time before they suffered martyrdom.

Mary Huston died on August 11, 1900. Her body and that of Hattie Rice were taken by boat to Wuhan, where they were buried in the foreigners’ cemetery. Huston was 34-years-old. One of the many tributes that came in for her said,

“Miss Huston was always bright and affectionate. She was always ready to shower love on all who came within her reach. She thus soon won the love of all around her. From the first the children loved her dearly…she gathered the little ones round her on Sunday afternoons and taught them what she could…. They would climb on her knees and kiss her just like English children do.”[4]

1. Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, 62.
2. Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, 63.
3. Glover, A Thousand Miles of Miracle in China, 310.
4. Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, 63.