1847 - Walter Lowrie

August 16, 1847

Hangzhou Bay, Zhejiang

Walter Lowrie.

The honor of being the first Protestant martyr in China belongs to the American Walter Macon Lowrie, the son of a famous politician from Butler in Pennsylvania. Lowrie’s father, Walter Lowrie, Sr., represented Pennsylvania in the U. S. senate from 1819 to 1825. On the expiration of his term he was elected secretary of the U. S. senate, an office he held for 12 years. He engaged in politics with the fear of God and founded the Congressional prayer meetings. After retiring from the political arena, he became the Corresponding Secretary for the Western Foreign Missionary Society, which later changed its name to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. His eldest son John was a missionary to India, while Walter Jr. volunteered for missionary work to China after graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary in November 1841.

The American Presbyterian Mission commenced work in China in 1837, and the eastern province of Zhejiang was first entered in June 1844 by Dr. Divie McCartee, who settled in the large city of Ningbo. McCartee found living in the heart of the city held too many distractions, so he managed to rent some rooms in a Daoist monastery near the city, and the peaceful environment resulted in him making good progress in the language.

Walter Lowrie sailed for China on January 19, 1842, aged just 22. He arrived at Macau and remained in the Portuguese colony for two years, spending his time in language acquisition while indulging in his passion for studying the Scriptures. Lowrie could read both Hebrew and Greek, and was highly respected by his fellow missionaries for his knowledge and humble demeanour. Lowrie sailed up the coast to Zhejiang Province and took up residence in the monastery with McCartee in April 1845. The Ningbo Mission was duly formed that year with a total of eight missionaries, with McCartee the leader. A printing press was brought in onboard a ship in July of the same year. In its first two years of operation 635,000 pages were published and distributed—mostly gospel tracts and Scripture portions. Not long after his arrival, Lowrie wrote:

“The people are as civil and obliging as could reasonably be expected, considering the severe and uncalled for treatment they received during the war, and the thoughtless course of some English officers, in destroying the public buildings for firewood. We are better treated here, by far, than a Chinaman would be in New York or London; though it does occasionally ruffle one’s temper to hear himself called a…white devil, with some other such choice epithets.”[1]

In 1847 Lowrie was invited to attend an inter-denominational mission meeting in Shanghai. During the conference a messenger arrived from Ningbo asking him to return immediately because of an emergency. Lowrie left Shanghai on August 16th, crossing Hangzhou Bay in a small vessel. His servant told what happened next:

“Suddenly, a pirate ship was seen bearing down upon their small craft. Discharging their firearms, the pirates boarded the ship with swords and spears plundering everything in sight. Concerned that the foreigner would testify against them they decided to throw him overboard. He was pushed over the rail, as they did this Lowrie threw up on the deck a copy of the book he had been reading—Bagster’s edition of the Bible in Hebrew, Greek and English.[2] Lowrie floated around in the water for some time and then sank out of sight.”[3]

Walter Lowrie was dead at the age of just 28. When his home church in Pennsylvania heard the tragic news, they were shocked and full of grief. In 1850 Lowrie’s father published a huge 504-page book entitled Memoirs of the Rev. Walter M. Lowrie, Missionary to China.[4] Tens of thousands of copies were printed. The result was that many Christians committed their lives more fully to Christ, while many unbelievers saw in Lowrie’s testimony what a true Christian life was like, and they believed in Christ for the first time. Lowrie Sr. published two more books in honour of his son’s life and studies.[5]

1. G. Thompson Brown, Earthen Vessels and Transcendent Power – American Presbyterians in China, 1837 – 1952 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 31-32.
2. A collection of Lowrie’s papers and letters are deposited in the Historical Foundation of the Department of History at North Carolina State University in Montreat, North Carolina. Among the collection is the well-used Hebrew-Greek-English Bible that he threw onto the boat just prior to his death.
3. Thompson Brown, Earthen Vessels and Transcendent Power, 33.
4. See Walter M. Lowrie, Memoirs of the Rev. Walter M. Lowrie, Missionary to China. (Edited by his father. New York: Carter, 1850).
5. See Walter M. Lowrie, The Land of Sinim: Or an Exposition of Isaiah XLIX. 12 Together with a Brief Account of the Jews and Christians in China (Philadelphia: W. S. Martin, 1850); and Walter Macon Lowrie, Sermons Preached in China (New York: R. Carter & Bros., 1851).