About the Collection
This collection comprises photographs taken in China from 1909 to 1911 by the Methodist missionaries Mary Ninde Gamewell and her husband, Frank D. Gamewell.
Mary was member of the Ninde family, which contributed four generations of ministers and missionaries to the Protestant Episcopal and Methodist Episcopal churches during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her father was Reverend William Xavier Ninde, a Methodist bishop who traveled widely throughout his career. Like her father, Mary Ninde Gamewell devoted much of her life to missionary work.
Frank D. Gamewell, a civil engineer and educator, was active in Methodist mission work from 1881 to 1930, serving as professor, principal, and acting president of Peking University; superintendent of education for the Methodist Church in all of China; executive of the China Educational Association; and associate secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church Board of Missions. Frank Gamewell received worldwide acclaim for organizing the defense of the Methodist Mission and the British legation, where most foreigners took shelter during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in Peking (Beijing).