Graham in Brief
The earliest reference to David Crockett Graham in the
archives of the American Baptist Historical Society - a description marked July 25th, 1911, written immediately
prior to his departure for China
- describes a childhood marked by both traagedy and ambition. Born in Green Forest,
Michigan in 1884, David Crockett Graham
spent most of his childhood in Washington
state, where he moved with his family at age
four. Graham's mother died of
tuberculosis shortly after the move, and subsequently his older sister
"cared for him as tenderly as a mother." D.C. Graham's father could not afford his
education, so he worked his way through Whitman
College and subsequently obtained a
Bachelor of Divinity degree at Rochester Theological Seminary in New
York. While in
school, Graham took on leadership roles in the Young Men's Christian
Association and the Volunteer Board of his college. As soon as he graduated from Rochester
in 1911, he married Alicia May Morey, a fellow Rochester
student, and set off on missionary work.
The tendencies toward leadership and activity exhibited in
Graham's formative years intensified dramatically during his working life. All records of his work suggest a man nearly
possessed by a need to know more, do more, and see more. After arriving in Sichuan
province in late 1911, Graham gradually began to take over the duties of leading
the city of Suifu's Christian community, while learning Chinese. During these early years he established a
"Young Men's Guild" in Suifu, patterned
after the YMCA, which provided local boys with a reading room, games, a museum,
and other resources. This was but one of many institutions Graham
would found during his career. In 1918
he returned to the United States
to study religious education, world religions, and the history and psychology
of religion at the University of Chicago. While in the U.S.,
he stopped by the Smithsonian Institutions and offered to collect natural
history specimens during his summer vacations.
He carried out fourteen such expeditions for the Smithsonian between
1919 and 1939, collecting over 4,000 specimens and discovering at least 244 new
species. Some, like the butterfly dryonastes grahami, bore his name. Graham furthered his education throughout the
1920's and 30's, taking courses in anthropology at Chicago
and Harvard and earning a doctorate from Chicago
in 1928.
In 1934 the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society
transferred Graham to the Sichuan
capital, Chengdu,
where he divided his time between teaching, missionizing,
research and collecting. Graham took a
position teaching anthropology and archaeology at the West
China Union University,
a private Christian school, and became the Curator of the University's
museum. Simultaneously, he served as
Secretary and then President of the West China Border Research Society, also
writing often for its Journal. In 1941 and 1942, he participated in a study
of the Ch'iang ethnic group through the Church
of Christ's Border Service
Bureau. Even upon his retirement -
necessitated by Alicia Graham's ailing condition in 1948 - D.C. Graham spent a
year traveling and lecturing about his own experiences and the value of
missionary work.
Entering China
with the Revolution of 1911, and departing on the eve of the Communist
Revolution of 1949, David Crockett Graham led a life that was deeply engaged
with a China in
profound flux. Having acted in China
in so many different positions - missionary, educator, scientist,
administrator, curator and collector - D.C. Graham provides a provocative entry
point into many issues relating to Western involvement in the non-Western
world. Before delving deeper into
Graham's life and work, I will address and elaborate upon some of these issues,
primarily the concept of Orientalism and the role of
missionaries in this phenomenon, as well as Western imperialism in general.