Oberlin in Asia: A digital collection documenting the sharing of the ideals of learning and labor  

In 2008 the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association celebrated its 100th anniversary. Although the Association began in 1908, the history of Oberlin in Asia dates to the 1880s with the creation of the “Oberlin Band,” a group of Oberlin students who answered the call to serve as missionaries to China. Although this digital collection documents the period beginning in the 1880s, the inspiration for the call to service dates back to the beginning of the colony and the college.

The principles that lead to the founding of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1833 (the name of the college until 1850) helped to inspire the work of the Oberlinians who served as teachers, ministers, missionaries, and social reformers in the 19th century. John J. Shipherd and Philo Stewart founded the colony and the college patterned after the life and values of John Frederick Oberlin (1740-1826), a Lutheran minister in Alsace-Lorraine, France. Oberlin served his people in many capacities as minister, educator, agricultural expert, political and social reformer, and mentor.

Shipherd and Stewart established their community removed from the corrupting influences of large cities. Hard work, faith in God, and service to people were keys to the new community they called Oberlin. The early mission of the school included the training of teachers to help educate those less fortunate. 

The Oberlin Collegiate Institute was the first college in the United States to admit women thus marking the beginning of coeducation at the college level. By 1835, two years after its founding, the Trustees of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute agreed to admit African Americans. The College also increased its enrollment and financial resources with the arrival of a group of anti-slavery students from the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, and the financial backing of Lewis and Arthur Tappan. The Tappan brothers also supported the appointment of Charles Grandison Finney to the faculty of the Oberlin Theology Department. Finney, a well-known revivalist and preacher, eventually became Oberlin’s second president.

Oberlin’s anti-slavery fervor is well documented in the collections of the Oberlin College Archives and Library.  Philo Stewart commented, “Every teacher that went out from the institution was an abolition lecturer” (E. C. Stewart: A Worker, and Worker's Friend, 1873). In the years leading up to the Civil War Oberlinians travelled and preached about the evils of slavery and Oberlin became known as the most notable stop on the Underground Railroad. The 1858 Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, in which Oberlinians rescued a runaway slave from slave catchers, sparked a controversy over the Fugitive Slave Law that inspired writer Nat Brandt to dub Oberlin as “The Town that Started the Civil War.” Oberlinians answered the call of President Lincoln to serve in the Union Army; the soldier’s monument in Oberlin is a memorial to those who served.

Oberlinians served as teachers and missionaries, both in the United States and beyond. As early as 1842, Oberlinians travelled to Minnesota to work among the Ojibwe Indians. Oberlinians such as Frederick Ayer and Sela G. Wright spent several years learning the culture of the Native Americans. From 1853 to 1876, Lucy Angela Woodcock, Oberlin Class of 1852, served as a teaching missionary in Jamaica. Sarah Blachly Bradley, Class of 1845, served as a missionary in Thailand from 1848 to 1893.

From the end of the Civil War through the 1870s Oberlin continued to pursue rights for African Americans by working with the American Missionary Association in the South. Oberlinians participated in lectures and meetings to support women’s suffrage and prohibition. It was in this period of social reform, both at the local level and throughout the United States, that Oberlinians petitioned to form a group to serve as missionaries in China.