Elizabeth’s parents, Harold Wesley Robinson and Mary
Elizabeth Stambaugh, first met in 1910 aboard the
S.S. Wilhemena after boarding in San Francisco bound for
Honolulu, Hawaii. Harold had grown up in Warren, Vermont, one
of seven children, and the only one to leave the farm, finish high school,
and attend college. Among other things, it was discovered
he had a photographic memory. Harold was going to to teach
mathematics at the Mid Pacific Institute in Honolulu to
replace his friend Ralph Richardson who had been offered an
engineering position for the construction of Pearl Harbor.
In 1913 Harold enters Union Theological Seminary in New York. After his second year at Union, he applies to the American Board (based in Boston) to go to China as a missionary and is accepted. It is arranged by the American Board’s Secretary, Dr. Edward Lincoln Smith, for Harold to join the Central Congregational Church and go as their representative to China. After graduating from Union, Harold is ordained in the Congregational Church of Brooklyn in May 1916. He and Mary are married in her parents home in Spokane on August 8, 1916, and they sail to China that September. Elizabeth’s oldest brother Harold is born in Paotingfu on January 1, 1918 and her second brother James is born on October 4, 1920. She is born in Barre, Vermont on November 1, 1923 while her family is home on its first furlough. The Robinsons go back to China in February, 1925. Prior to their return, the family of five stayed with Mary’s parents in Long Beach, California. The following was their Passport photo taken in Long Beach.
1 November 2023: Celebrating the 100th year of Elizabeth’s birth, a listing of the Chinese Chimes is now presented in the page of her parents, Harold and Mary.
As a way of communicating with family and friends back in the U.S., Harold and Mary would occasionally compose a newsletter of sorts which they called “The Chinese Chimes”. Three editions are reproduced here:
• The Chinese Chimes -
Formerly (The Paotingfu Bugle), 1925
• The Chinese Chimes - Christmas Number, 1925 • The Chinese Chimes - Appreciation Number, 1926 As Elizabeth describes this project in her autobiographical essay, “First Memories”: Missionaries abroad kept in touch with their U.S. families by writing long Christmas letters, that covered changes in height and weight as well as the major illnesses and childrens’ clever sayings of the previous year. Of course there were no computers so these were typewritten on thin sheets of paper and mimeographed copies sent to various family branches back home. My parents Christmas letter, “The Chinese Chimes”, was written as if our family were some sort of well ordered corporate venture. Father became “Editor (Pretend),” mother was “Busy Manager,” Harold was “Cub-Reporter,” James, “Sport Editor,” and I, the “Treasurer”—metamorphosed in the Chimes into the “Treasure,” by virtue of my being the only girl, last child. |
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