China Oral History Project. Records

The China Oral History Project began as the brainchild of the Reverend Leslie Lindsey Fairfield, who served in the Episcopal Missionary District of Shanghai from 1935 to 1940. Aware that few Episcopal missionaries had documented their experiences in China, Fairfield feared that an important chapter in the history of the Church's missionary work might be lost. In 1977, he approached Episcopal Church Archivist V. Nelle Bellamy with the prospect of initiating an oral history project, which would target some 60 former China missionaries. Bellamy agreed to sponsor the project with administrative and logistical support. After securing a small grant from the Cushman Charitable Trust, the Archives assumed responsibility for the administration of these funds and all subsequent contributions to the project.

Fairfield set the project in motion in 1981, when he enlisted William Moss, former President of the National Oral History Association, as a volunteer interviewer. Moss conducted five interviews of former missionaries. In late 1982, Wayne Anderson, Director of the Oral History Office of Northeastern University, was hired to continue with the interviews. In 1984, the Archivist instigated the formation of a Steering Committee for the project, consisting of herself, Dr. Paul Ward, and Fairfield, who would serve as chairman. The Committee hired Cynthia McLean to replace Wayne Anderson as interviewer. McLean conducted the remaining 26 of the project's 56 total interviews.

The project proceeded slowly as funding remained a persistent problem as many of the Committees grant applications were met with rejection. The project took a turn for the better in 1986 with a Lily Memorial Fund grant of $1,500 and a $5,000 Marcia Brady Tucker Foundation grant, followed by a $2,500 United Thank Offering grant the next year. The project was completed with a final grant of $6,000, which Fairfield secured from the Diocese of Western Massachusetts in 1988.

By 1989, McLean had left the project and in 1991 the Committee discontinued the interviews. The project reached completion in 1992, when the Archives transcribed the last of the interviews.

By the project's end, it had targeted 85 missionaries and/or missionary couples. Of that number, eleven were deceased by the time the interviewing got underway. The three interviewers conducted a total of 56 interviews over the course of the project. One missionary couple, the Fairfields, gave two of the 56 interviews. The Steering Committee abandoned 19 potential interviews when the project fell into abeyance in 1989.