1900 - Jessie & Isabel Saunders

July 27 – August 3, 1900

Hubei

Isabel (left) and Jessie Saunders – innocent victims of the Boxer Rebellion.

Alex Saunders and his wife were the first Protestant missionaries at Pingyao in Shanxi Province. For years they laboured away in almost total isolation. In 1896 the Saunders made a request for more workers. Alex wrote,

“I should like to urge upon all who read this, the burden of your responsibility to pray the Lord of the harvest to thrust forth labourers. Just think for a moment about the immensity of our field, a district one-third the size of Scotland, containing eight walled-cities and about three thousand towns and villages, and we are three foreign Missionaries!”[1]

When the Boxers started their killing spree, two parties of Shanxi missionaries tried to flee to the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province, a thousand miles (1,620 km) south. The children who went along were especially courageous. At every town, mobs of furious people came out and abused the foreigners.

Jessie Saunders was born in China on April 12, 1893. The Chinese people loved her dearly, as she was the personification of innocence. Very early on in her life she loved Jesus, and sometimes said, “When I see Him, I will look for the marks of the nails in His hands and feet.” Often as she passed people in the street she would ask her parents, “Do you think they have heard about Jesus?”[2] After the escaping party were badly beaten in one town, seven-year-old Jessie reminded her parents, “If the people loved Jesus, they would not do this.” After a number of days on the road, Jessie was struck with a fever. The missionaries stopped in an abandoned barn. While her loving mother fanned her, the little girl looked up, smiled, and announced, “Jesus was born in a place like this.”[3] A few days later on July 27th, Jessie’s baby sister, Isabel, died from beatings and exposure to the hot sun. Her grief-stricken mother wrote, “She had been so patient and passed away so peacefully, we could only rejoice for her that she was safe for evermore.”[4]

After her little sister’s death, Jessie grew weaker and often told her mother that she wanted to go to a comfortable place. Her “wish was granted a week [on August 3rd] after Isabel’s death. The two children were buried beside the road.”[5]

1. China’s Millions (May 1896), 68.
2. “Jessie and Isabel Saunders,” 47.
3. “Jessie and Isabel Saunders—Two Child-Martyrs in Shan-si,” China’s Millions (March 1901), 47.
4. “Jessie and Isabel Saunders,” 47.
5. Hefley, By Their Blood, 26.