Don Roulston Buzzard

4.2
Daughter Nellie Smith

Nellie Smith was born between July and September 1880 and was baptised in Chilvers Coton, England on 1st August 1880.

Baptised Chilvers Coton, England [30]

Photo from Church Missionary Society [31]

In 1913, the electoral roll showed Nellie as being a saleswoman and living at the family home, 57 Victoria Street, Lewisham.

Nellies mother died on 22nd June 1919, from a “malignant disease of the uterus” (which must have been a protracted illness). For about five years, prior to taking up missionary work, Nellie had been active in the Young People’s Union, an inter-denominational group of young people with a focus of helping missionaries.

It was not uncommon for people holding a strong religious faith to decide to become a missionary with the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS), which was founded in England in 1799. Nellie was a single woman, nearly 40 years of age, living at home, and probably tending her ailing mother. Thousands upon thousands of religious married and single men and women who sought a meaningful life decided to become missionaries. With Asia and Africa opening up to the world they saw a “calling” to assist spread the Christian faith to the “heathens”.

She was sent to Hong Kong and arrived there on 18th August 1920.

Annual Letter to CMS stating that she arrived Hong Kong 1920 [32]

However, she served most of her time at the provincial towns of Pakhoi and Limchow in southern China.

Pakhoi and Limchow in Southern China [33]

Hong Kong was a relatively stable area of China at the time as it was a British Colony. However, this stability had been won at a cost. Hong Kong Island was a trading port for the Chinese until 1842, when the Opium Wars began. The ability of the missionaries, like Nellie, to enter China and undertake their work was as a direct consequence of the Opium Wars and the many treaties thereafter imposed on successive Chinese Governments by foreign powers.

Her first posting was to the Foundling Home (an orphanage on Hong Kong Island) formerly called the Berlin Mission and founded by the “Berlin Ladies Missionary Society” in Berlin in 1850. The posting occurred before her formal acceptance by the CMS on 16th July 1925. Various letters over the period 1920 to 1925, between London and Hong Kong, highlighted that the CMS were not able to give her formal recognition, as a CMS missionary, until it had been established that the N.S.W. branch of the CMS were going to fund her work.

Finally, acceptance of Nellie by the CMS [34]

In addition to the yearly letters which she sent to London, Nellie’s nine years of service in China were well documented by her contributing to the “Gleaners” magazine, a monthly magazine sent to CMS staff.

After her death on 23rd June 1929 the following letter was sent from the offices of the CMS in Canton to Mrs. Thornton, the Secretary of the CMS in London.

Notification of Nellie’s Death from Pakhoi [35]

At the time, the only foreigners present in the Pakhoi and Limchow district were a Miss Rogers and the Rev E. T. Loader. The reverend seemed to be overly concerned with lack of staff that Nellie’s death created.

Letter from the Rev. E.T. Loader on Nellie’s Death [36]

A notice of her death appeared in the September 1929 edition the CMS “Outlook Magazine”.

Nellie’s Death Reported in “Outlook Magazine” [37]

Nellie Smith was buried in Pakhoi, China.

The Rev. C.B. Shann was to organize gravestone. [38]

The family was notified of her death and a death notice appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

Death Notice 26th June 1929

Whilst Nellie was in China, Florence Kate, her spinster sister, passed away on 17th November 1922 and was buried with her sister Alice in the Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, on 18th November.

------------------------------
[30] Ancestry
[31] - [32] Church Missionary Society
[33] 1899 United States Government Commercial map of China
[34] - [38] Church Missionary Society