A Few Posts on Macao III – The Old Protestant Cemetery

got a bit delayed in getting up some older posts from a recent trip to Macao.  So time to catch over the summer before other stuff intervenes again. Remembered I haven’t mentioned the old Protestant Cemetery after noting George Chinnery’s grave a while back here are a few more images of the cemetery and Morrison and Walter Medhurst’s daughters grave.

Robert Morrison (1782-1834) was a Scottish missionary, the first Christian Protestant missionary in China. After 25 years of work he translated the whole Bible into Chinese and baptized ten Chinese believers. He did lot else as well that time and space do not allow – click here to see more. Although he died at Canton he was buried Morrison was buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery in Macao. The inscription on his marker reads:

Sacred to the memory of Robert Morrison DD.,
The first protestant missionary to China,

Where after a service of twenty-seven years,

cheerfully spent in extending the kingdom of the blessed Redeemer
during which period he compiled and published
a dictionary of the Chinese language,
founded the Anglo Chinese College at Malacca
and for several years laboured alone on a Chinese version of
The Holy Scriptures, which he was spared to see complete and widely circulated

among those for whom it was destined,
he sweetly slept in Jesus.
He was born at Morpeth in Northumberland
January 5th 1782
Was sent to China by the London Missionary Society in 1807
Was for twenty five years Chinese translator in the employ of
The East India Company
and died in Canton August 1st 1834.
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth
Yea saith the Spirit
that they may rest from their labours,
and their works do follow them

Next to him is buried his wife and child.

Sir Walter Henry Medhurst was born in Batavia in 1822 and died in Torquay in 1885.He was the son of the prominent British missionary (also) Walter Henry Medhurst. However, his son was educated in Macau where he acquired a good command of Chinese, Dutch and Malay. In October 1840, he was appointed Chinese secretary to the British superintend

ent of trade in China. During the Opium War, he worked under captain George Elliot and Sir Henry Pottinger. In the following years, he held a number of important consular official in Chinese treaty ports such as Fuzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hankou. However, he lost his daughter, Ann Isabel, while stationed in Macao and her grave lies in the old Protestant Cemetery.

A Few Posts on Macao I – Chinnery Mosaics

A Few Posts on Macao II – Chinnery’s Grave