The Joint Archives Quarterly

The Joint Archives of Holland is the repository for several collections of RCA missionaries who ministered, often for career-length terms, in places as far-flung as Mexico, India, Arabia and Japan, the settlements of Native Americans and the farms of the American rural poor. Recently the archives opened the papers of William R. Angus, Jr., who with his wife served the Amoy region of China for 27 years, and the Philippine Islands for an additional fifteen. The papers not only represent the work of a man of God, but that of a poet whose humanity is conspicuous in his verse.

William Angus was born in New York City on October 4, 1901. His formal degrees were earned at Rutgers College (B.S., 1922), Hartford Theological Seminary (B.S.T., 1925), and Rutgers College again (D.D., 1947). He was licensed by the RCA Classis of Bergen in 1925. While studying the Amoy Chinese dialect to prepare for his applied-for ministry, he met his future bride, Agnes Joyce Buikema. Once commissioned by the Board of Foreign Missions, Angus departed for the Amoy district in 1925, where he ministered alike to the city dwellers and mountain folk of South Fukien province on the Formsoa Strait.

Joyce Buikema was also sent to China to be an English instructor at mission-run Talmage College, officiated by two rather colorful spinster sisters, mementos of whom are in the Angus Collection. The Anguses married in 1927 and during their pre-war years in China the couple had three children: Margery Anne, David Robertson, and John Galen Angus.

Soon after the birth of their daughter in 1930, the city of Changchow in South Fukien was taken by the forces of Mao Tse-tung. The Anguses took an enforced furlough from China, following the appropriation of their home and possessions by the Maoists. Recountings of this and a similar post-war incident in William Angus’ papers and interviews, make the Communist takeovers seem almost comical, with Maoists fervently rubber-stamping each itemized bit of Angus and mission property before looting their home and redistributing its capitalist “wealth” among the Chinese. Angus’ takeover accounts reveal his sense that a detached observer can envision the simple, even obvious, moral choices possible amid a turmoil of ideologies and human reactions to them – a sense that also informed his poetry.

China was dangerous for missionaries, and would be so again. The Anguses returned to South Fukien, where their two sons were born. Angus continued his missionary work in the provincial mountains, despite knowledge of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and imperial advances made toward the Formosa Strait. After the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, Japanese troop movements cut off Angus, away in the mountains, from his family, who were interned as prisoners of war. While Joyce and the children were repatriated to the U. S. within weeks, Angus would be separated from them until 1946, after the war ended.

In 1947–after another furlough, during which Angus studied the Mandarin dialect at the Yale Language School–the couple returned to South Fukien. Together they extended their missionary outreach to the Lengna station in the interior, a responsibility shared with other RCA missionaries. But the Communists’ post-war inroads into public acceptance led to their “liberation” of South Fukien province. With religious observance under increasing restriction–to the point that Angus could no longer preach or perform missionary travel–the Anguses applied to leave China, and were granted exit in 1952. After a furlough in Holland, Michigan, the couple was recommissioned to serve in the Philippines, where they worked at Legaspi, Cagayan de Oro and Manila. Retiring in 1967, the Anguses resided for a time near their son, David, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and then moved to Orange City, Iowa, where they opened their home to Chinese and Filipino students at nearby Northwestern College.

Pastor and Poet (continued from page 4)

In retirement, Angus found time to revise and reshape his two unpublished collections of poetry, The Bible in Verse: A Metrical Paraphrase, and South Fukien: A Missionary’s Miscellany. Angus’ biblical versification is considered and eloquent, with an austerity of language visibly imposed through Angus’ several drafts. The decades of narrative poems assembled in South Fukien, however, are superlative at elevating personal observation to a work of universal appeal and historical significance. In the Fukien poems, scenes of missionary life are inseparable from scenes of community moral life. Angus shares Catholic novelist Graham Greene’s gifts for spotting dramatic situations amid everyday life in a foreign land, and for pointing out the moral solution to controversial and dangerous events that eludes his characters. As shown in the reprinted poem below (“Illustration”), Angus was unafraid to portray that same capacity for enlightenment redounding upon himself in an unguarded moment.

After a long illness leavened by William’s devoted care, Joyce Angus died in 1974. Angus set up a memorial scholarship in her name at Northwestern. Thanks to his son David’s donation, the papers William Angus, Jr., left behind after his 1984 passing, are available to scholars as part of the Western Seminary collection at the Joint Archives. Researchers may view photographs and documents of the Amoy mission, hospital and schools, 1925-1952, Angus’ publications and sermons as missionary in the Philippines, and editions of his poetry. Other RCA missions collections at the Joint Archives contain materials pertaining to the Anguses and Amoy Mission, most notably the Old China Hands Oral History Project Collection, which features a lengthy interview with Angus. A current exhibit of Angus photographs and documents may be viewed by visitors to the sixth floor conference room at Beardslee Library of the Western Theological Seminary.

Illustration

He was trying to comfort a woman whose husband gambled.
“Long ago in Chioh-be there was a woman whose husband
Would keep her from going to church till she gave him money
For gambling. He was a rascal and sponged on her,
And she took in washing and mended clothes for a living.
But she was patient and prayed.”

“Did her husband reform?”

“No. He died. And she became a Bible woman.
God opened a road for her that way.” He caught himself.
“I was just using that as an illustration,” he said.

— William R. Angus, Jr.

Along with the newly opened William R. Angus, Jr., Collection, the Joint Archives holds several research collections of missionaries to other cultures. Here are just a few of the offerings:

John R. Kempers (W00-1256)
Papers, 1913-1995. 4.50 linear ft.

Kempers and his wife, Mabel, were the first RCA missionary-and-wife team in the impoverished Chiapas province of Mexico, 1925-1969. Kempers was a 1921 Hope College graduate, attended Princeton Theological Seminary, and reveived an honorary D.D. degree from Hope in 1950. After leaving Chiapas, Kempers taught for four years at the Mexico City seminary. This collection is rich with photographs of the indio groups of Mexico, photos of Kempers ministering by jeep, plane and on muleback, correspondence, and Kempers’ biographical sketches of himself and his wife.

Lois Marsilje (W94-1181)
Papers, 1866-1987. 15.00 linear ft.

A Holland High School and Hope College graduate (1932), Marsilje trained as a nurse. She was assigned as a missionary to Arcot, India, in 1942. There she trained and supervised native nurses at Scudder Memorial Hospital in Ranipet. Her collection features copious photographs of her nursing charges and hospital facilities, correspondence with her mother in Michigan, and records of her training and service.

Jeannette Veldman (W89-1012)
Papers, 1912-1989. 10.50 linear ft.

This Grand Rapids native attended Hope College Preparatory School and graduated from Hope College (1926) before her nursing education. Veldman spent a year as a community nurse in Gray Hawk, Kentucky, for the RCA Women’s Board of Domestic Missions. In 1930 she took a missionary nursing position at Hope Hospital in Amoy, China, where she was a colleague of William and Joyce Angus. During World War II she was interned for two years as a Japanese prisoner of war. Veldman also served at Arcot, India, and in 1952 was assigned to the Arabian mission as Director of Nursing and in-service education. She began a school of nursing that served Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Her collection includes diaries, correspondence, speeches, and a charming photo album of Hope College life in the 1930s.

Albertus Pieters (W88-1231)
Papers, 1886-1985. 7.00 linear ft.

Pieters served as missionary to Japan from 1891-1923, until the debilitating illnesses of two of his children compelled him to return to the U.S. He accepted the Chair in Bible at Hope College, 1923-1926, and a professorship at the Western Theological Seminary, 1926-1939. He was an influential and fondly remembered educator. The Pieters collection includes typed course notes, addresses and sermons, and articles.

The Joint Archives also holds administrative collections for the RCA missions and missions boards below. Most feature annual reports, meeting minutes, photographs, and publications:

Board of World Missions (W88-0301)
Records, 1850-1989. 4.50 linear ft.
Board of North American Missions (W88-0304)
Records, 1849-1968. 4.50 linear ft.
Women’s Board of Foreign Missions (W88-0303)
Records, 1875-1946. 2.50 linear ft.
Women’s Board of Domestic Missions (W88-0308)
Records, 1884-1947. 2.00 linear ft.
Arcot Mission (W88-0312)
Records, 1886-1995. 0.75 linear ft.
Brewton [Alabama] Mission (W88-0313)
Records, 1921-1982. 0.50 linear ft.
Chiapas Mission (W88-0314)
Records, 1925-1985. 0.50 linear ft.
China Mission (W88-0315)
Records, 1888-1977. 1.00 linear ft.
Appalachian Mission (W88-0316)
Records, 1987-1989. 0.75 linear ft.
Arabia Mission (W88-0316.1)
Records, 1889-1989. 0.75 linear ft.
Japan Mission (W88-0316.2)
Records, 1901-1981. 0.50 linear ft.
Kentucky Missions (W88-0317)
Records, 1937-1958. 0.25 linear ft.
Leprosy Mission (W88-0318)
Records, 1937-1958. 0.50 linear ft.