Scope and Contents
The Archie R. Crouch Papers consist of photographs and papers reflecting the Crouch family’s experiences as American missionaries in China during the Sino-Japanese War. These experiences continued to impact the focus of Archie Crouch’s research and work as a China scholar and administrator with the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the Presbyterian Church.
Series I, Journals, dating from 1939 to 1963, contains copies of typed journal entries of Archie R. Crouch from 1939 to 1941 describing the family’s daily life in Ningbo when it was the target of Imperial Japan’s military attacks. He quotes from and references these entries in his manuscript entitled “Japanese Biological Warfare in China: One Family’s Encounter” found in Series IV. This series also contains some of his personal journals of 1947, 1949, and 1950 that describe his family’s life in California and his work in churches and church administration along with the start of his Ph.D. work. The journals of 1960 and 1963 describe his overseas projects and administrative work with the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church.
Series II, Correspondence, dating from 1944 to 1989, contains reports and letters detailing the breadth of Archie R. Crouch’s work in Chinese missions. The series begins with copies of Archie R. Crouch’s reports sent to various people and organizations in the United States from his post in China as English Secretary for the Border Service Department of the Church of Christ in China from 1944 to 1946. More information on his work with the Border Service Department can be found in the Border Service Department of the Church of Christ in China records (RG 17). A report to the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions identifying Archie and Ellen Crouch as receiving the American missionary H. V. Bradshaw upon his return to the U.S. from China due to the rise of anti-American sentiments follows. Next, there is a subseries of Archie R. Crouch’s correspondence from 1984 to 1989 as China Mission Resource Project Director at Princeton Theological Seminary. Lastly, this series contains a 1989 letter and book from Ellen Crouch to her daughter Carolyn about American missionaries to China.
Series III, Presentations on China, contains Archie R. Crouch’s undated presentation notes for three talks on women’s liberation and politics in China. The notes are divided into numbered lines that seemingly correspond to specific images, many of which are found in the slides of Series VI.
Series IV, Writing and Research on China, dating from 1911 to 1989, contains Archie R. Crouch’s writing and research on China arranged according to two different subjects. The first two subseries contain his writing and then research on biological warfare in China. The last two subseries deal with his writing and then research on Chinese minority groups. The first subseries on his writing on biological warfare begins with his completed manuscript “Japanese Biological Warfare in China: One Family's Encounter,” followed by the chronology he used in writing it, photographs he hoped to publish along with it, and his past writing on the subject. This is followed by his correspondence with friends and editors about the manuscript and then by the articles about his family’s experiences that were written by Mark Wolf and were published in 1989, which in some ways fulfilled his hope of telling this story to a wider audience, albeit by a different path than he intended.
Series V, Collected Materials, dating from 1919 to 1986, is divided into three subseries: general research on China, airforce materials, and collected art. General Research on China contains National Geographic Magazines dating from 1919 to 1932 and clippings from 1986 related to life in China. Airforce Materials contains a US Airforce Maps of the Mountains of South Asia and the Hump Pilots Association Newsletter across the years 1978 to 1988. Archie R. Crouch’s connection to this association is due to his experience flying over “The Hump” in a C-47 plane with military personnel and cargo while serving as English Secretary for the Border Service Department of the Church of Christ in China. Collected art includes Yuan Chi Photo Studio Prints representing the gospel stories with identifiably ethnically Chinese characters.
Series VI, Photographs, dating from 1936 to 1944, contains two scrapbooks with captioned photographs documenting the Crouch’s experiences in China from 1936 to 1941 (one scrapbook may have been compiled by Archie and the other by Ellen) as well as undated slides corresponding to the presentation notes of Series III and capturing life in China during this given period. The slides cover a range of subjects: Chinese art and posters; children and students; daily life and people gathered in groups; places and landscapes; work and industrialism; women’s liberation; maps; and Mao Zedong.
Dates
- 1911 - 1990
Conditions Governing Access
The materials are open for research.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Transferred from the Institute of Historical Survey Foundation, 2023.
Arrangement
- Journals, 1939-1963
- Correspondence and Reports, 1944-1990
- Presentations on China, n.d.
- Writing and Research on China, 1911-1998
- Collected Materials, 1919-1988
- Photographs, 1936-1955
Extent
3.5 Linear Feet (8 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Persistent URL
Abstract
Extensive photographs and writings from Archie R. Crouch reflect his family’s survival of military atrocities as American missionaries in China during the Sino-Japanese War and his attempt to publish those experiences out of concern for biological and nuclear weapons manufacturing and threat in the late twentieth century. Journals, collected materials, and correspondence from the 1940s to 1990s provide insight into Presbyterian and ecumenical mission work and China scholarship during this period.
Biographical / Historical
Archie R. Crouch (1909-1999) was born in Veblen, South Dakota. He was educated at Jamestown College and received theological training at Princeton Theological Seminary as well as a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. After two years as a pastor in California, he served in China as a missionary from 1936-1941 and 1944-1946 through the Board of Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church (later renamed as the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations or COEMAR in 1958). He was initially sent to China in 1936 where he served in war emergency service during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Archie and his wife Ellen were assigned to work and live in a compound in Ningbo that included a Chinese church, residence for the Chinese pastor, a boys’ and girls’ primary school with residences for teachers, and two residences for missionaries. Missionaries Roy and Mabelle Smith occupied the other residence. However, the war delayed the Crouch’s settling there. After arriving in Shanghai in September 1936, Archie and Ellen studied Chinese and traveled in Suzhou (Soochow), Peitaiho (Beidaihe), Beijing (Peking), and Ningbo (Ningpo). In 1938, Archie began teaching at a middle school in Shanghai, and their first child Edward was born that October. The family finally fully moved into the compound in Ningbo in August 1939. Their second child Carolyn was born the following fall. Archie and Ellen both taught school and helped take care of refugees in the compound.
In July 1941, Archie, Ellen, and their two children–Edward and Carolyn–fled their home there due to the escalation of the war and increased fears for their family’s safety. Before evacuating to the United States, they witnessed Imperial Japan’s destruction of Ningbo, including frequent bombings, the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack followed by the outbreak of plague, and a naval and land blockade that led to mass starvation before a ground invasion. He documented his and his family’s experiences in China in journal entries and with captioned photographs compiled into scrapbooks.
From 1944 to 1946, Archie Crouch worked as the English Secretary for the Border Service Department of the Church of Christ in China. He gathered and preserved the papers of the Border Service Department that now make up the collection RG 17. In that position, he cooperated with other agencies to carry out educational, medical, and agricultural programs in western Sichuan, Sikong, and Yunnan, among the peoples known as the Kiang or Ch'iang, Chiarong or Gia-rung, Lolos or Nosus, and Miaos.
Upon returning to the United States and after an interlude serving as Presbyterian campus pastor at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the administrative staff of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the United Presbyterian Church (COEMAR). He continued work with this organization until his retirement in 1971. As an administrator, he oversaw many overseas projects, including those that had him travel to Lebanon, Malaysia, Kenya, and throughout West Africa.
After retirement, he was able to commit himself more fully +to his scholarship. He wrote Christianity in China: A Scholar’s Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States, which was published in 1989 and earned him the Distinguished Service Award from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1990. He also researched and collected materials related to his experiences serving minority ethnic groups with the Border Services Department and his family’s experience of the Kaimingjie germ weapon attack in Ningbo. As the Director of the China Mission Resource Project at Princeton Theological Seminary, he was in frequent correspondence with other scholars, including Thomas F. Torrance, a Scottish theologian and Presbyterian minister whose writing centered on the theory that ancient Israelite descendants were living in Sichuan and inspired Archie Crouch to explore these questions in his own research. He completed a manuscript entitled “Japanese Biological Warfare in China: One Family’s Encounter” that he sought to have published through the 1980s and 90s. While he failed to place the manuscript, Mark Wolf wrote a news piece based on Crouch’s story that appeared as “Plague Survivors” in the Rocky Mountain News and “The Day the Plague Came” in Presbyterians Today in 1998. A devoted husband, father of four children, and committed China scholar, Archie R. Crouch died a year later in 1990 in Edgewood, Colorado.
- Title
- Guide to the Archie R. Crouch Papers
- Author
- Abby Langford
- Date
- 2024
- Description rules
- Finding Aid Prepared According To Local Divinity Library Descriptive Practices
Part of the Yale Divinity Library Repository