Philadelphia Quaker, Soldier Of Fortune

Updated July 24, 2014

The Story of Sandwith Drinker

Sandwith Drinker (b. November 19, 1808, Philadelphia – d. January 17, 1858, Macau) came from a remarkable family from the East Coast of the United States whose history can be traced back to the 1630s. His fifth great-grandfather, Philip Drinker (b. October, 1596, Exeter, Devon – d. June 23, 1647, Charlestown, Massachusetts), a potter by profession, was among the about 220 passengers who boarded the immigration ship Abigail in various ports before finally leaving its last port in England, Plymouth, on June 4, 1635. Its destination – New England. Philip had brought with him his wife, Elizabeth (b.1603 – d. October 7, 1651), and their two sons, Edward, 13, and John, eight. Abigail arrived Colonial America on or about October 8, 1635 and anchored in Massachusetts Bay, reportedly with smallpox aboard. Philip's name appeared for the first time in the list of Charlestown inhabitants of May 17, 1637. He was a much welcomed addition to the community; he was the first potter not only in Charlestown, but the entire New England^[1]. In 1638, he and a man named James Green (b.1610-d.1687, Philip would referred to him as Brother James) were given half a house that they were to share with a garden at the east end of the common lands, where Mystic (Mystick) River bridge of today connects Charlestown and Everett. The other half of the house was owned and occupied by a man named William Bicknor. Philip kept the first ferry over the Mystic River, which was later called the Penny Ferry, from 1640 to 1647. He was admitted to the church on February 6, 1638 and became a Freeman, and was appointed a town officer in 1646.

[1] If Philip was the sole potter in New England as I said he was, his days of dominance didn't last long. I've found the following from an article titled Pottery & Porcelain at the website of noteaccess:

Men with technical knowledge were here among the first. Brick making was reported by 1612 in Virginia, 1629 and 1635 in Salem and Boston. Roof tiles or 'tile Earth for House covering' appeared in Massachusetts court orders of 1646, and 'tyle-makers' prospered in Virginia by 1649. The potter Philip Drinker arrived in 1635 in Charlestown, and that same year at nearby Salem the 'potbakers' William Vinson [Vincent] and John Pride were recorded. One 'extraordinary potter' came in 1653 to Rensselaerwyk [Albany] on the ship Graef, and a Dirck Claesen 'Pottmaker' was established by 1657 at Potbaker's Corner, in New Amsterdam. The thumping of the potter's wheel was soon heard in every colonial town of consequence, and for New England alone [says Lura W. Watkins] 250 potters were recorded by 1800, twice that number by 1850.

Philip ran his pottery with son Edward and apprentice (or servant) John Gouldsmith (Goldsmith). As his business prospered, after a time he had another house built in which he resided until he died on June 23, 1647. Philip left this house and the pottery to Edward, who carried on the business until he was chased out of Charlestown by Dunkards. Edward, like his father, opposed infant baptism and the theory of infant damnation and was quite vocal about his opinion despite having already been labeled an Anabaptist. In 1665, he was jailed for forming a new church^[1], with a small group of religious reformers ("radicals" as they were called at the time) headed by Thomas Gould (Gold) - which was illegal, and after a brief detention, had escaped to Boston. In the same year he helped founded the First Baptist Church of Boston. Edward started a pottery and shop in Boston and continued to prosper. Their pottery in Charlestown was taken over by Edward's apprentice James Kettle (b.1664), who himself became a famous potter. Among other things, Kettle was well-known for training Ann MacDugale, the first documented woman potter in colonial America.

[1] I found this in the History of First Baptist Church, Boston, MA written by Nathan Wood in 1899.

"The first record on our Church Book reads: The 28 of the 3rd mo. 1665 in Charlestowne, Massachusetts, the Churche of Christ, commomly (though falsely) called Anabaptists were gather And entered into fewwlowship & communion each with other, Ingaigeing to walke together in all the appointments of there Lord & Master the Lord Jesus Christ as farre as hee shouyld bee pleased to amke known his mind & will unto them by thus word & Spirit, And then were Baptized Thomas Gold, Thomas Osbourne, Edward Drinker, John George..."

Metacom, sachem of Wampanoag and Narraganset, etc. (b.ca.1638-d.1676), also called Metacomet, King Philip. Credit: Metacomet's War: A Novel of King Philip's War.

Edward fought in the King Philip's War (1675-76) as the Lieutenant of Captain William Turner, who was also a member of the First Baptist Church of Boston and was jailed with Edward, Gold, and Osbourne, etc., for being Anabaptists. The most well-known "notorious" battle Turner had fought was the raid on Wissatinnewag, a Native Indian village in Peskeomskut (present day Gill, Massachusetts) that took place in the morning of May 19, 1676. The company of 150 Puritans had striked the village killing almost all its inhabitants of no less than 300, most of them women and children. The raid later became known as the Battle of Turner's Falls, or the Peskeompscut massacre. Turner was killed during the retreat. Second in command of the raid was Lieutenant (later Captain) Samuel Holyoke, rather than Edward. A large portion of Turner's original troops were ordered home to Boston on April 7, 1676. Edward was among them.

John, Philip's younger son, abandoned his father's trade and became a shipwright. Unlike his brother, Edward, who was fast becoming a wealthy man (by 1687, in addition to 12 houses, Edward owned mills, and wharves, a horse, and 20 cows), John led a humble livelihood. He inherited from his father a quarter of the house given by the town and somehow also procured James Green's interest in the property (Green purchased land from a Abraham Palmer in 1647, the same year Philip died, and there he built his own house), so that he and his wife, also called Elizabeth, continued to live there. John sold his interest in that property on January 10, 1655. As John's business prospered, he acquired a new house on Trumbull’s Lane, which he later sold in July 1676. Edward died heirless and in his will drawn in 1696, he left his estate for life to his second wife Mary Emmons and John, his brother. With the inherited wealth, John's family prospered further, although I found no further record that shows the status of his own ship-building business beyond 1670s.

Here is the line-of-descent from Philip Drinker to Sandwith Drinker: Philip (b.1506-d.1647) → John (b.1627-d.unk.) → Joseph (b.1653-d.unk.) → Joseph (Jr.) (b.1684–d.1742) → Henry (b.1709–d.1764) → Henry, HD (b.1733–d.1809) → Henry Sandwith (b.1770–d.1824) → Sandwith (b.1808-d.1858).

Joseph Drinker, son of John and Elizabeth was the first Drinker (Edward had two wives who bore him no children) born in America. I have nothing on him except that he lived in Beverly. Genealogical data of his family, and those of his descendants are contained in Appendix II. Joseph Jr., son of Joseph and Ruth Balch, was probably a stonemason. He and his wife Mary Janney removed from Beverly to Philadelphia, and there he was admitted as a member of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of Friends. Joseph Jr.'s son, Henry, was a scrivener by profession. As I understand it, he would either be a professional or public copyist or writer, or a notary public, or all of those. He married Mary Gottier of Philadelphia, on November 26, 1731, before a magistrate in Burlington, New Jersey, without the consent of his parents. He was 22, Mary 18.

Henry, HD (he was referred to as "HD"- initials of his names - in the journal kept by his wife, I am to do the same in the following text, or sort of, I feel the need of adding Henry before the initials), son of Henry and Mary Gottier, was the most famous Drinker of all time. The same can also be said about his wife, Elizabeth Sandwith. Henry, HD had been, at the age of ten or eleven, apprenticed to shopkeeper George James, and afterward formed a partnership with his son, Abel James, in the shipping and importing business, trading under the name of James & Drinker. The firm was ranked one of the top importers of the time. In 1773, the firm was appointed one of the four Philadelphia consignees for the tea that the British East India Company planned to sell in the American market. Amidst heavy public pressure, Henry, HD and Abel resigned their appointments, but even then they could not erase the public suspicion that they were British supporters. In 1773, Henry, HD and Abel bought a partial interest in an ironworks in Atsion, New Jersey from its founder, Charles Read. During the Revolutionary War, the ironworks was engaged in supplying camp kettles, but no products relating to weaponry for the Continental army. The ironwork continued to prosper until 1815, from whence business began to decline. By 1824, it was in ruin and Henry Jr, sold his half share of Atsion to his then partner, Samuel Richards. Henry Jr's partnership with Abel James ended in 1776 when James went bankrupt after loosing out in property speculation. With the money he salvaged from wounding up the partnership, Henry, HD bought two farms, Retreat Plantation and Mount Carmel, as well as timberlands, all in South Carolina.

In the first five days in September 1777, the Supreme Executive Council of the governing authorities of Pennsylvania issued a warrant for the arrest of 41 Tories (British royalists) and Quakers based on a list drawn up by the Continental Congress's ad hoc Committee on Spies; John Adams was one of the only three members in the Committee, for the fear that they might turn enemy collaborators or even saboteurs. The Quakers, by nature pacifists, would maintain their neutrality, therefore refused to sign non-importation agreements and other acts in support of the new government, and gave the Continental government all the reasons they need for the arrest. On September 11, 20 arrested men, including 17 Quakers, among them Henry, HD, was sent into captivity without trail in Virginia. They remained in jail until April 27, 1778. Two had died in captivity.

Henry, HD had completely recovered his social stature in Philadelphia a decade after being persecuted as a religious nonconformist. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society on January 20, 1786, and a member of the Common Council of Philadelphia on April 15, 1789. He was an active supporter of Westtown School and served on the Board of the “Overseers of ye publick School” of Philadelphia. Henry, HD had an monstrous appetite for land (or in today's term, landbanking) but lacked behind in enthusiasm for their development. Soon after the Revolution, he, together with three signers of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, George Clymer, and Robert Morris (the latter two were among the five people who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and Samuel Meredith, the Quaker brother-in-law of George Clymer, and several other important figures began to procure Pennsylvania wild lands by hundreds of thousands of acres. Additionally, he had purchased from the State, in the course of 1789 to 1791, twenty five thousand acres of land in what are now the counties of Lackawanna, Wayne, Pike and Sussquehanna, which was later dubbed Drinker's Beech. The development of this land would only come to fruition when undertaken by the grandnephew of Henry, HD, Col. Henry Waln Drinker^[1] (b. June 25, 1787 - d. October 13, 1866), oddly a non-pacifist Quaker who fought in the War of 1812. The subsequent discovery of coal in the land and Henry Waln's perseverance in bringing the resources of the wilderness to the attention of the outside world had created a large fortune for this branch of the Drinker family when the land was sold to others in 1866, the year the Colonel died.

[1] Henry, HD bequeathed the Drinker's Beech to his nephew Henry (b.1757-d.1822), son of his elder brother John (b.1733-d.1800)  instead of any of his sons. What (there ought to be something) went wrong between Henry, HD and his children was not mentioned anywhere I have looked. Henry, the nephew, was elected in 1800 Cashier of the Bank of North America, Philadelphia, the first bank chartered in the United States (1782, opened for business in 1783, and eventually became a part of Wells Fargo, through a number of merges and acquisitions between 1929 and 2008), a position he had held until at least 1820. The bank was founded by Robert Morris, Henry, HD's friend and partner in the landbanking enterprise. Henry Waln was named after both his parents. His mother, Mary Howell Waln, was the granddaughter of the famous Quaker minister Nicholas Waln.

Sharing Henry, HD's fame in history was his Philadelphian wife, Elizabeth Sandwith, daughter of William Sandwith, Quaker merchant and shipowner. She went to the Anthony Benezet's Friends school in Philadelphia, and was exceptionally well educated for a woman at that time. Elizabeth was famous for the journal that she had been keeping since she was twenty three years old (1758) and continued until the night before her last illness (1807). "The Journal of Philadelphia Quaker Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker" is praised as the single most significant personal record of eighteenth-century life in America from a woman's perspective. The original diary is kept in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. At the time when her husband was jailed in Virginia, Elizabeth was one of the four women ^[1}sent by the detainees' families to present their case to General George Washington and Congress. On April 6, 1778, she and the other three women went to Valley Forge to see George Washington, they were instead received by Martha Washington. The women were invited to dine with the Washingtons, Tench Tillman, Nathanael Greene, Charles Lee and 12 other Continental officers. Elizabeth did not get what she had come for but neither did she came away empty-handed. The General had given them passes to Lancaster where the Quakers were detained. The women left Valley Forge that day and arrived at Lancaster on April 9. Unbeknown to them, the Pennsylvania Supreme Executive Council had already voted to discharge the detainees by the time they arrived at Lancaster but it wasn't until April 24 and 25 that they were allowed to meet with the detainees. By April 27, the ordeals were over for the detainees when they were at last allowed to return to Philadelphia. If George Washington had anything to do with expediting their releases, it was done rather discreetly, as I've found no record pointing that way. Also, the formality of a proper discharge never took place. The following was what Elizabeth wrote in her diary on April 6 describing the visit to Valley Forge,

"left J. Roberts after Breakfast, and proceeded on to the American Picket guard, who upon hearing that we were going to head-quarters, sent 2 or 3 to guard us further on to another guard where Colll. Smith gave us a pass for Head Quarters where we arriv’d at about ½ past one; requested an audience with the General—set with his Wife, (a sociable pretty kind of Woman) untill he came in; a number of Officers there, who were very complient, Tench Tillman, among the rest, it was not long before GW. came and discoarsd with us freely, but not so long as we could have wish’d, as dinner was serv’d in, to which he had invited us, there was 15 of the Officers besides the General and his Wife, Gen. Green, and G. Lee we had an eligant dinner, which was soon over; when we went out with the General Wife up to her Chamber, and saw no more of him,—he told us, he could do nothing in our busyness further than granting us a pass to Lancaster, which he did, and gave a Letter to Il. Morris for T. Wharton"

Isreal Preberton, Jr. Credit: Preserving American Freedom. [1] The other three were: Susanna Evans Jones (b.1179-d.1801, wife of Owen Jones, Sr.; her son Owen, Jr., was one of the detainees). Mary Pemberton Pleasants (b.1738-d.1821, daughter of Israel Pemberton, Jr., wife of Samuel Pleasants; both her father and husband were detained). Phoebe Lewis Morton Pemberton (b.1738, wife of detainee James Pemberton, who was the brother of Israel Pemberton, Jr.). [It appears to me that S.E. Jones and M.P. Pleasants were the leading figures of the delegation, as their names were the only ones written in Washington's letter authorizing the issuance of passes to Lancaster. Israel Pemberton, Jr. (b.1715-d.1779) was an eminent figure among the Friends and was often referred to as "King of Quakers".

Henry Sandwith, born to Henry, HD and Elizabeth Sandwith, was unlike his father who made his fortune from mercantile business and land speculation; he wanted to be a framer. When he married Hannah Smith in 1794, at the age of twenty four, he received from his father, as a wedding gift, a farm at Pennsbury Manor, Bucks County, Pennsylvania to which he named North Bank. The farming endeavor he had on North Bank had never taken off, he meanwhile continued to be supported financially by Henry, HD. In the first few years of the 1800s, he spoke of giving up farming and instead to embark on a seafaring life, much to the dismay of his father, and other Drinkers, who felt he would become “unquakered”. Finally in 1806, against the strongest protests of his father, he went ahead and sold North Bank and sailed as supercargo on voyage to Calcutta. Henry Sandwith's seafaring career didn't go well either and he hadn't made another voyage since. Upon returning to Philadelphia, he helped his father manage the family estate, but their relation never regained the affection that it once had.

Sandwith Drinker (I shall call him by his last name from here on in, now that he has become our main character.) was born in Philadelphia on November 19, 1808 to a rather big family, even for one of Quaker. He had thirteen siblings, only eight however lived to adulthood. I found no information about Drinker's childhood or him as a young man, but suspect that he, and his twin brother Charles, probably were the first children born outside North Bank. The first record about him showed that he was already twenty nine years of age, by then he was a merchant ship captain and had been living in Macau since 1837. Without doubt, his father was the source d'inspiration to Drinker's choice of a seafaring life and an intense interest in the East.

David W.C. Olyphant. Credit: Electric Scotland.

Nathan Dunn. Credit: Phoenix Bonsai Society.

In the 1830s, Macau was the only entrepot in China open to all foreign powers, no less importantly it was a center for spreading Christendom. It was the place to be at for anyone who wanted to make it in the Orient, Quakers including. Drinker had no problem finding other Friends to congregate, from the United States or England, not that it mattered. The Society of Friends had a presence in China and Macau since the Eighteenth Century, and in Hong Kong since about 1839. The most outstanding American Quakers having their presence in Canton (Guangzhou) / Macau were David Washington Cincinnatus Olyphant (b.1789-d.1851) who founded the trading firm Olyphant & Co. 衕孚洋行 in Canton in 1826, and Nathan Dunn (b.1782-d.1844) of Philadelphia. Both Olyphant and Dunn were very active in opposing the illegal importation of opium into China and opiate abuse. They and some other Friends were the only foreign merchants permitted by the Qing government to trade at its southern ports in the lead up to the First Opium War because of their anti-opium stance. Quakers were influential at the inception of Colonial Hong Kong. When the capital of the island was to be named, "Queen's Town" was suggested and favored by many; the Friends advocated calling it Victoria, and so it was decided - without further hiccups. There was even a newspaper controlled by Quakers – The Friend of China. The establishment and initial operation of the newspaper, Hong Kong's first non-government paper (March 24, 1842 in Macau and later published in Hong Kong - 1859), was financed by four Quakers [whose names I am still researching]^[1]. I know not if Drinker was a devoted member of the Friends, but he certainly came from a family of staunch Quakers. His grandfather Henry, HD was one of the most prominent Quakers at his time, who served as Clerk of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Drinker's granduncle John (b.1733-d.1800) was the Clerk of the Meeting for Sufferings whilst another granduncle Joseph (b.1737-d.1809) was the first advocate of equal admission of people to the Society of Friends regardless of their color; he opined this pioneering notion in an essay he wrote in 1795. All three were persecuted by the new government during the Revolutionary War.

[1] James White (b.1809-d.1883) and Richard Oswald were founders/owners of the newspaper. Unfortunately, I found no records that showed they were Quakers. White was formerly an alderman of London (1837-1839 or 1841), who left Hong Kong for Shanghai in 1844. Oswald was a young merchant active in land speculation in Hong Kong, who died in London at the age of thirty eight, leaving a substantial estate. White co-edited the paper with the Rev. Jehu Lewis Shuck 淑士人(o) (b.1812-d.1863), a Virginia Baptist minister who arrived in Macau in 1836.

So it was Macau that Drinker called home in the late 1830s. He felt ill in 1838 and had been under medical care in Macau, and after a time he went home to Philadelphia and there he stayed temporarily to recuperate his health. His address was 101 North 10th Street, Philadelphia at the time. While in Philadelphia, he met Susanna Budd Shober (b.1813 - d.1860, Baltimore, Maryland), daughter of Blathwaite Shober and Catharine Ann Snyder. They married on March 17, 1840. Five months later in August, Drinker accepted a remarkable appointment to navigate the Sultana (built in 1835, also known as the Al-Sultanah), the royal ship of the Sultan Seyyid Said (b.1790-d.1856) of Oman, from New York for Muscat and Zanibar.

The Sultana arrived in New York in April 1840, and became the first vessel of African / Arabian origin to travel to America, and it carried the first Arab emissary to call on the United States. The diplomatic and trade mission was headed by the secretary to the Sultan, al Hajj Ahmad bin Na’aman bin Mushin bin Abdulla el Kaabi el Bahrani. Ahmad bin Na'aman fired the English captain, William Sleemen, who commanded the Sultana from Zanibar upon its arrival in New York. Sleeman had been drunk a lot of times during the journey and as a result, absent from his duty as captain and navigator; the crew had to consult two American sea captains they encountered for advices to set the course. Additionally, the lack of leadership on the part of Sleeman had caused the ship to arrive New York in a wretched condition. When the ship set sail again on August 7, 1840 under the command of Sandwith “Drinker”, who definitely was soberer, it was fully repaired, with the assistance of the City of New York, in pristine condition. It took him six months to reach Zanibar and another six homebound.

Drinker's first two children were born in Philadelphia, Catharine Ann on May 1, 1841 and Robert Morton on July 1 the following year. He brought the whole family to Macau towards the end of 1842 or the beginning of 1843. By 1845, he had abandoned seafaring life and settled down in Hong Kong^[1].

Townsend Harris.

Drinker's social circle in Hong Kong was made up of mostly American, of those, Townsend Harris and Eldon Griffin were the closest. Townsend Harris (b.1804, Sandy Hill (Hudson Falls), New York – d.1878, New York) was a merchant who made frequent visits to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, between 1848 and 1854. He was the first U.S. Consul General appointed to Meiji Japan (1856-58, Minister 1858-61), and was responsible for the negotiation of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce Between the United States and Japan (dubbed the “Harris Treaty') in 1858, which secured the commercial and diplomatic privileges for the United States in Japan and constituted the basis for Western economic penetration of Japan. The other close friend, Dr. Griffin, historian, was the author of the book “Clippers and Consuls: American Consular and Commercial Relations with Eastern Asia, 1845-1860”. Franklin (Frank) B. Meigs (b.1829, Philadelphia –d.1881) became Drinker's friend when he lived in Hong Kong in 1847-48. Meigs was the son of Dr. Charles Delucena Meigs, one of the most prominent obstetricians at his time. He had been living in Philadelphia since 1817 and was closely related to the Academy of Natural Sciences, which was founded in 1812 in Philadelphia. Drinker made a number of donations to the museum in 1850, including a Python Javanicus and a head of the Walrus, Trichecus rosmarus, from the Arctic Ocean. A fellow merchant ship captain Nathaniel Kinsman (b.1798, Salem, Massachusetts - d. May 1, 1847, Macau) and his Quaker wife Rebecca Chase had been friends of the Drinkers since 1843, the year, by coincident, the two captains' wives arrived in Macau. Kinsman commanded the Zenobia and ran tea from China to New York for the famous Bostonian merchant and shipowner Daniel P. Paker. From 1844 and until he died in 1847, Kinsman was partner of Wetmore & Co. 森和洋行, the leading American merchant in Canton. He lived in Canton while his wife continued to stay in Macau and took care of all the Wetmore affairs there on behalf of her husband.

Rebecca Chase Kinsman, ca.1840s, by Charles Osgood. Credit: Silk Damask.

Gideon Nye Jr. Credit: Find A Grave (uploaded by Douglas Jones).

Rebecca Chase Kinsman  (b.1810–d.1882) was best remembered by the diary she kept, which was later published: Journal of Rebecca Chase Kinsman kept on her voyage to China in 1843. After Nathaniel died, Rebecca Chase returned to Salem, and there she married Joseph Grinnell (b.1788-d.1885) in 1865. A wealthy Quaker who had built his fortune from whaling, Grinnell was, among other achievements, the President of the Marine Bank (later First National Bank) (1832-76), and a U.S. Congressman (1843-51).

Another old timer Drinker befriended with was Gideon Nye, Jr. (b.1812, Fair Haven (Achushnet), Massachusetts – d. January 25, 1888, Canton), a merchant who went to Canton in 1833. He returned to the U.S. in 1845 with a large fortune, part of which he invested in a collection of paintings he acquired in London, and later exhibited in New York. Nye returned to China in 1850 and after a time he over extended his operation and upon the falling market in the U.S., his business collapsed in 1856. He was the U.S. Vice Consul in Macau (1858-63), and in Canton (1878-88). He was a noted writer on China and China trade; no less than ten of his books were published. Probably at the introduction of Nye, Drinker became a friend of Peruvian and naturalized U.S. citizen, William M. Robinet. Robinet was a Hong Kong based Merchant engaging, among other things, in the sugar trade in Fomosa, and in 1856 became the first “American” concern to set up shop in Takow (Kaohsiung) 高雄. He was able to secure a number of exclusive concessions from the local authorities in exchange for U.S. Navy's protection against pirates (for the U.S. Navy, this was like an open invitation to station in Takow). Robinet extended his scope to include the trade of camphor from Fomosa and had at one time partnered with Nye.

[1] There was however one reference that said Drinker was captain of British registered merchant ship Candace, which sailed in 1846 from America to China.

An engraving entitled "Entrance to the Port of Takow" by unknown artist. Credit: Peeps into China (1882).

What some of Drinker's friend had in common was far from being common. Nye, in 1857, laid out a scheme to annex Formosa and presented it to the U.S. government. Townsend Harris and William Robinet were actively rallying behind Nye. Unusual as it was, U.S. diplomats in the region teamed up with flag officers of the U.S. Navy's East India (Indies) Squadron (established in 1835, oddly, in Hong Kong) in giving their endorsements to the aggression plan, they included Commodore Matthew C. Perry, Commodore James Armstrong^[1], Dr. Isaac Jackson Allen who was U.S. Consul to Hong Kong, and Dr. Peter Parker 伯駕(o), a medical missionary of American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, who in 1844 was appointed secretary and interpreter of the first U.S. legation to China, and between 1856 and 1857 the U.S. Commissioner Plenipotentiary to China. The annexation brief, when reached the hands of U.S. Secretary of State William L. Marcy, through Parker and with his endorsement, was outright rejected. The State Department gave Parker this reply, "This country, you will constantly bear in mind, is not at war with the Government of China, nor does it seek to enter into that empire for any other purpose than those of lawful commerce, and for the protection of lives and property of its citizens..." Commodore Armstrong was ordered to stand down the task force he had already deployed, on his own authority, outside of Fung-shan, or Fengshan(p), 鳳山縣舊城. The objective of the task force was to capture the fortress in Tsoying 左營, in Takow, and from there a marine contingent would land and take possession of the island. After his inauguration as President, Franklin Pierce had Parker replaced and instructed his successor, William Bradford Reed, that on no account was the U.S. to annex Chinese territory.

Cdre. James Armstrong. Credit: ancestry.com [1] Commodore James Armstrong 奄師大郎(o) (b.1794– d.1868) was the commander of the Hong Kong based East India Squadron (October, 1855 – January 1858) who initiated a week-long naval and amphibious conflict with Qing China (to be known as the Battle of the Barrier Forts of Canton) after one of his warships, which was evacuating sojourning American in Canton to Hong Kong, was fired at by Qing soldiers at Wangtong, or Hengdang(p) Fort 橫檔炮台 guarding the Pearl River on November 15, 1856, having mistook it for a British warship. Armstrong, who regarded that mistake as an insult to the American flag ordered the attack. He received, afterward, a written reprimand from the Department of Navy for unnecessarily escalating an incident otherwise resolvable by diplomatic means. The evacuation of American from Canton was recommended by Yeh Ming-ch'en, Viceroy of Liangguang, following the outbreak of the Arrow War between Britain and Qing China. Back in the States and years later (1860), Armstrong was put in charge of the Pensacola Navy Yard in Florida, which he voluntarily surrendered to the Confederate forces on January 12 1861. A court-martialed in March the same year convicted him of neglect of duty, disobedience of orders, and conduct unbecoming an officer; he was suspended from duty for five years with loss of pay for half of that period.

Drinker's social circle included a fraternity of people who, wishfully, were compatible and shared the same value – the Freemasonry in Hong Kong. Freemasonry reached China in 1759 with the first meeting held in Canton. The first lodge in Hong Kong, the Royal Sussex Lodge was established in September 1844, it later moved to Canton, then on to Shanghai. The second lodge, Zetland Lodge, was established in March 1846 and it has remained in Hong Kong since its formation. Early Freemasons included old fashioned yet aggressive merchants such as Samuel Rawson of Fox, Rowson & Co.; Nicolai Duus, a Danish merchant who was the Danish Consul in Shanghai and Consul for Sweden and Norway in Hong Kong; and Quaker Sandwith Drinker, who became the Worshipful Master of Zetland Lodge (1850-51). There were military and government personnel as well, such as J.H. Cook, paymaster of HMS Minden, Hong Kong's first hospital ship, who was the first Master of the Royal Sussex Lodge; Peter Harrison Spry, paymaster of HMS Wolverine, a sixteen-gun brig sloop came to Hong Kong to take part in the Frist Opium War; James F. Norman, commissariat assistant storekeeper, Royal Artillery; John Pope, a civil engineer who later became the Clerk of Work for the Surveyor-General Department (1844-1847); Alexander Lena, the Italian Assistant Harbor Master; John Wright and T.W. Marsh, both were post office clerks. Hong Kong Freemasons in the Nineteenth Century also included those who held dear a different set of values than their fraternity brothers. Daniel Richard Francis Caldwell 高和爾(o) (b.1816-d.1875), Registrar General & Protector of Chinese, was kicked out of government service because instead of protecting the Chinese populace, he was protecting his interest in a partnership with notorious Hong Kong-based confederate of pirates Wong Mah-chow 黃墨洲, alias Wong Akee. Cadwell, afterward, offered his service to local operators of gaming and brothel houses.  Caldwell was twice elected Master of the Royal Sussex Lodge, thrice the Zetland Lodge. He was so respected that after his death, his fraternity brothers erected for him a magnificent memorial which still stands today in the Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley. Camaraderie and righteousness prevailed, no such thing as questionable moral. Barrister William Thomas Bridges 必列者士(o) (b.1820-d. ), close friend of Caldwell, while holding the office of Acting Colonial Secretary, provided inside information to a bidder of opium monopoly, who was a client of his private law practice, for a fee. The bidder, Chan Tai-kwong 陳大光 (b.1827-d.1882), also a Freemason, was a protégé of George Smith, the first Bishop of Victoria who placed him on three years' probation before ordination. Chan, however, preferred dealing in opium than saving souls. He won the bid acting as the front man of opium syndicate Wo Hang 和興, but soon ran into serious financial difficulties and disappeared from Hong Kong. Yung Wing ^[1], or Rong Hong(p), 容閎 (b.1828-d.1912) was the first Asian graduate of Yale, a naturalized U.S. Citizen, a pious Christian, and a holder of a LL.D. degree from Yale. Yung was not a Freemason. He had in fact applied to become one; his application was blackballed.

Wedding photo of Mary Kellogg. Credit: Washington State University. [1] Yung Wing married Mary Louise Kellogg of Avon, Hartford, Connecticut on February 24, 1875. She was the daughter of Edward Kellogg, a doctor of homeopathic medicine, who once cared for the children of Mark Twain. Edward Kellogg was also the fifth-generation ancestor of Clint Eastwood.

Gustavus Vasa Fox. Credit: President Lincoln in Civil War Washington.

A ship captain friend of Drinkers who would later rise to eminence was Gustavus Vasa Fox (b.1821-d.1883). Fox, Captain, US Navy, was in command of USS Plymouth, a 20-gun sloop, which sailed to Canton in 1848 as a part of the US Navy East India Squadron. When in Hong Kong for shore duty later that year, Fox stayed with the Drinkers as their house guest, for a month and a half. Fox had grown fond of Catharine (Kate), Drinker's daughter, when he left Hong Kong in July 1850 he left her with his favorite pet dog, Minna - named after his wife's oldest sister. After leaving the US Navy in 1856, Fox went on to become a manufacturer of woolen materials, but rejoined the navy at the onset of the Civil War. He was made the first Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President Abraham Lincoln on August 1, 1861. He kept that position until 1866. Fox and his wife Virginia Woodbury, who was the daughter of Charles Levi Woodbury ^[1], were regulars at the White House. Virginia, a close friend of Mary Lincoln, laid a bombshell by making the following entry in her November 16, 1862 diary (which was later made public) “Tish [her source] says, 'there is a Bucktail Soldier here devoted to the President, drives with him, when Mrs. L. is not home, sleeps with him.' What stuff!' [Since I am on this trail of tabloidism, I might as well go on a little bit more. The Bucktail soldier Virginia referred to was believed to be Captain David Derickon, Lincoln's bodyguard; and Tish, Letitia Hannah McKean, granddaughter of Declaration of Independence signer Joseph Borden McKean.]

[1] Woodbury was Governor of New Hampshire (1823-24); US Secretary of the Navy (1831-34); US Secretary of the Treasury (1834-41); US Senator (New Hampshire) (1841-45); and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1845-51).

Two years after he moved the family from Philadelphia to Macau, Drinker gave up seafaring life and became a merchant / importer with Hong Kong as his domicile. He did not inherit the craft of trading from his grandfather, Henry, HD, who had mastered and prospered from it but failed to pass on to his own children. Drinker's change of profession was not totally unexpected. This is what he wrote (which was included in his published book "A Private Journal of Events and Scenes at Sea and in India (Boston, 1990)") after piloting ship Sultana from New York back to Zanibar, "How I do detest the Ocean, a ship and every [thing] connected with them". His reluctance in taking overseas voyage, and the emerging business prospects created by the opening of Hong Kong as a free port, and the love of his daughter Catharine Ann (b. May 1, 1841, Philadelphia – d. July 19, 1922, Merion, Pennsylvania), then four years old, were reasons good enough to flip shoreside.

Frederic Tudor wrote his famous motto in 1805 as follows, "He who gives back at the first repulse and without striking the second blow despairs of success has never been, is not, and never will be a hero in war, love, or business.". Photo Credit: A List of Surprises.

As an agency trader, Drinker's first business dealing was nothing less than sensational. He was the Hong Kong agent for Boston shipowner, Frederic Tudor (b.1783-d.1864), nicknamed “The Ice King of the World”, who had been shipping ice cut from Wenham Lake in Massachusetts to various parts of the world since 1805. On July 17, 1845 the first shipment of Tudor ice arrived Hong Kong from Boston by the ship Lenox. The ice was sold to casual buyers for four cents a pound and daily delivery could be arranged from Drinker's ice house ^[1].

[1] According to records in Hong Kong, the first storage for ice, the “Ice House”, was built in 1845, on the site between Duddell Street and Ice House Lane. The land was granted by the government free of charge for a period of seventy five years on conditions that ice was sold to the government at cost. The first ice importation business from America ended in or about 1850, and Hong Kong relied on ice import from Northern China for more than a decade that followed. The Tudor Company returned to Hong Kong in the 1860s through another agency (Drinker died in 1858 and his family went home to America) working with the Ice Association which was formed in 1862 under the initiative of opium trader John Dent, to anew the American ice supply and erect the original of the present day Ice House (opened in 1864, the same year Tudor died). Business was as usual for Tudor until Glaswegian William Neish Bain, MIME (Member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, U.K.) came to Hong Kong in 1872-73 and brought with him an 540x1 ice-making machine (I am still finding out if 540x1 means the calorie output). Once here, Bain partnered with compatriot, John Kyle, who held the patent of a kind of ice marchine in England and Hong Kong [a], and ventured into the ice-making business under the name of Kyle & Bain. They began to build a plant in East Point (present day Causeway Bay) and by September 1874, they were selling locally-frozen ice. Tudor (the company) knew that was the beginning of their end as they couldn't compete with freshly made ice that was available on-demand. Four years later in 1878, Tudor & Co. sold their interests in Hong Kong to Kyle & Bain, which marked the final end of importation of American ice. Only a year later in 1879, Kyle and Bain was acquired by Jardine, Matheson & Co. The company was renamed Hong Kong Ice Works, and after 1881 - Hong Kong Ice Company [time conflict: Hong Kong Ice Company Limited. was incorporated on December 31, 1880 (6/10/2014)], retaining Kyle and Bain, the former principals of the company, as advisers (1879 to at least 1890). William Parlane, MIME (b.1818, Balfron, Stirlingshire, Scotland - d. September 14, 1900, Ladyton Cottage, Bonhill, Dunbarton, Scotland) was hired as the first manager of the ice company (1884 to at least 1907 [time conflict with year of death]). Parlane had been engaged by Jardine Matheson since August 21, 1869 as a second engineer to work on the Company's steam ships. In 1918, the Hong Kong Ice Company merged with and became a part of Dairy Farm.

[a] I was able to find a government notification pertaining to John Kyle's ice machine patent:

Notification No.162, The Hong Kong Government Gazette, October 17, 1874 Notice is hereby given, that His Excellency the Governor in Council, under and in pursuance of Ordinance No.14 of 1862, entitled An Ordinance for granting Patents for Inventions within this Colony, has granted Letters Patent bearing date the 14th Day of October, 1874, unto John Kyle, of Glasgow, Scotland, for securing to him the exclusive right of using within this Colony of Hongkong and its Dependencies, an Invention, for which Her Majesty's Letters Patent have been obtained in England, "for Improvements in Apparatus for the Manufacture of Ice," for the residue of the term of Fourteen Years from the 2nd Day of September, 1873. By Command, J. Gardiner Austin, Colonial Secretary. Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, 14th October, 1874.

Drinker was the Hong Kong adjacent-ports agent for underwriters not only at Philadelphia, but also at New York and Boston. He supplied chandlers to American warships and was agent of Captains Charles Woodberry (b.1817, Beverly, Massachusetts - d.1855, Macau) and James Bridges Endicott (b.1814 Danvers, Massachusetts – d. November 5, 1870, Hong Kong), who ran ferries between Hong Kong, Macau and Canton. Drinker also partnered with a number of Americans and Europeans, at different times. Drinker & Heyl was listed in 1847, a food importer selling pickled tongues in half barrels, Kennedy's Boston water crackers in tins, sperm candles and Winchester soap among other goods. William S. Heyl^[1], his partner, was either an American also from Philadelphia or a German national. Three companies were listed in 1848, Drinker & Heyl, Drinker, Heyl & Co., Drinker & Co. He partnered with a fellow Philadelphia Quaker, Samuel Burge Rawle (b. July 1, 1787, Philadelphia – d. September 2, 1858, Macau) in 1849 under the name of Rawle, Drinker & Co. Rawle, formerly a partner of Danish merchant Nicolia Duus (Drinker's fraternity brother in the Zetland Lodge), was the American Consul in Macau (1858), and a good friend of Gustavus Vasa Fox. Among other agency arrangements, the firm was the China agent for The Straits Times (1853). There was also a firm named Drinker, Hunt & Co. A number of Hunt(s), including several Thomas Hunt(s) were listed around that time, I cannot be sure if they were in fact the same perosn who was Drinker's business partner. Drinker was agent for Thomas Hunt & Co., which was also Hong Kong based, in the lease of a house from a William Scott in June 1856. Thomas Hunt & Co. employed a man named O.H. Baker. Thomas Hunt & Co. owned an office building in Shanghai in 1862, which named after the firm, and which later housed the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation. Thomas Hunt was a boiler-maker at the Aberdeen Docks. Thomsa Hunt & Co. was one of the oldest ships' chandlers on the China Coast, based in Whampoa before moving to Hong Kong. There was also a Hunt & Co., owned by Thomas Hunt. With luck, I'll try and sort all these out. There was an American John Martin Armstrong (b. - d. July 3, 1897, Hong Kong), who was employed by Hunt & Co. in 1858 as a storekeeper. Armstrong had been employed by and associated with Drinker for a long time. He had been a clerk at Rawle & Drinker since its establishment in 1849. On February 15, 1854, Drinker sold the business styled Drinker & Co. to Armstrong and his partner Frederick William Lawrence. The firm was renamed Armstrong & Lawrence. In addition to general agency and commission business, the new firm also engaged itself as a forwarding agent. Armstrong went on to work for Hunt & Co. in 1858, and by 1876 1876, he was a government auctioneer. Armstrong married Emily Caldwell, daughter of Daniel Caldwell, Master of Hong Kong Freemasonry, and his Chinese wife Mary Ayow, nee Chan 高三桂夫人.

[1] Heyl was one of the first four "Forty-niners" from Hong Kong. Heyl, a Marvin (formerly captain of Anglona, the first American opium clipper, which was owned by Russell & Co.), George Winslow (a livery stable-keeper) and W.H. McConnell (a tarvern keeper) boarded the English brig Richard and William on January 9, 1849 and arrived in San Francisco on March 20.

The youthful William Charles Hunter. Credit: World History Connected.

William Charles Hunter (b.1812, Alexandria, Virginia (some said he was from Kentucky) - d. June 25, 1891, Nice, France) was Drinker's Canton counterpart as agent of captains Woodberry and Endicott. Hunter arrived in Canton as a youth of only 13 years old and apprenticed (1825-1829) to Jacob Covert and Oliver H. Gordon, both special agents of Thomas H. Smith and Sons of New York, the greatest tea importer in the United States. He had worked for Augustine Heard & Co. 瓊記洋行 and Russell & Co. 旗昌洋行 (in the latter he became a partner), both were leading American opium firms, and had made regular visits to Hong Kong and Macau. By 1845, when Drinker started his mercantile living, Hunter, although four years younger than Drinker, was already an old China hand - by any standard. As a self-appointed "chronicler of early Canton", Hunter had recorded in his writings ^[1], recount of events that took place among the foreign residents in Canton as well as what he had witnessed, from the epicenter, events that had led to the First Opium War and the taking of Hong Kong. Hunter was well-like and popular among foreign residents. He was, in particular, close to George Chinnery 錢納利(o) (b. January 5,1774, London – d. May 30, 1852, Macau), eccentric painter and Freemason who spent his last twenty seven years living and painting in Macau (including months he spent in Canton and six months in Hong Kong in 1845).

Dent's verandah, Macao (1842) by George Chinnery.

Hunter was twice the subject of Chinnery's work: a portrait and Dent's Verandah, Macao (left), which depicted three men sharing a relaxing moment at the verandah of Lancelot Dent's house in Macau. The men were, from left to right, French merchant Durant; Captain Hall of Russell & Co.; and Hunter. Dent was the proprietor of the opium firm Dent and Co. I found a record about Hunter owing Thomas Hunt & Co. a debt of unknown purpose, which was then assigned, on February 22, 1862, to J.M. Armstrong, who was employed by Hunt. There ought to be only hundreds of foreign residents in early Hong Kong (not counting the garrison), how could they not entangled together, one way or the other.

[1] Those better known are: Journal of the Occurrences at Canton; The Fan Kwae at Canton: Before Treaty Days: 1825-1844 (using the pseudonym of “An Old Resident”), the title is known in Chinese as 廣州番鬼錄; Bits of old China, 1855; etc.

In November 1854, Hunter brought a business proposal to Drinker, of unbefitting nature - for a Quaker.

Old map of the Pearl River Estuary, showing the location of Shawan and Kau-tong.

The counties of Shawan 沙灣司 and Kau-tong 茭塘司 in Canton (present day Shawan County 沙灣鎮 and Jiaotang Villages, Shilou County 石樓鎮茭塘村 respectively in the Panyu District 番禺區, Guangzhou) were located about eighty kilometers from Hong Kong up the Pearl River Estuary, on the west side of the river, after clearing the Bocco Tigris (Humen) 虎門. For centuries, people of the counties were victimized by endless pirate and bandit raids, partly because of its geographical location close to Hong Kong and Macau (for instance, the notorious Hong Kong based pirate Shap Ng-tsai 十五仔 was once active there), and partly because some of these pirates/bandits were originally from Shawan and Kau-tong. From early Eighteenth Century, people there began building forts around Kau-tong, and rebuilding them upon destruction or damages beyond repairs, as strongholds of defense. By the turn of the Nineteenth Century, there were five, about four-story high, forts still remaining. Fightings in this area during the First Opium War had caused some damage to the forts, but repairs were promptly made. In mid 1854, there was again a pirate attack upon the counties and all five forts were captured and afterward held by the pirates. The counties, however, were adamant to getting them back. Having considered that neither the local militia (more like posse comitatus) nor the Qing garrisons in the area was a matching opponent, in strength or fierceness, to the pirates, the counties' gentry had considered a different option – mercenaries. They opined that the war-like skill and courage of foreigners, which they themselves had personally observed in close-up during the First Opium War, could be the answer to their problems. With that resolved by consensus, a man, named Leang King-kwa (also spelled Liang Kingqua), who had access to, and was experienced in dealing with, foreigners was summoned and tasked to look for and hire the right soldiers of fortune. [It was rather like Kurosawa Akira's Shichinin No Samurai 七人の侍, or its Hollywood clone - The Magnificent Seven.] Leang was actually a good fit for the job; he immediately brought the matter to the attention of his old friend and business associate, none other than William C. Hunter. Leang new Hunter to be an old China hand capable of reading correctly into situations involving Chinese, persons or affairs, in fact he was one of a handful of Westerners who had earned respect and trust from Qing officials including the imperious opium buster Imperial Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu, Lin Zexu (p), 林則徐^[1]. Hunter, additionally, being amicable and well-liked, could move easily and without hindrance in circles of foreigners of any background. The two discussed the deal; it was a business deal after all, with deliverables on the one end of the equation, and payment of money on the other. With that done, Hunter set out to headhunt. I have no idea how Drinker's name ended up on his wish list, or for that matter, how high up he was on the list. Nothing I have read suggested Drinker had any soldiering background. Although all merchant ship captains of that time knew the basics of battling, some might even had the actual experience fighting off pirates, the leading of a fighting contingent in an amphibious combat mission seemed, nonetheless, a tall order, by any standard. On top of that, Drinker was a Quaker, a pacifist by nature. I could see the possibility of a Quaker fighting for a cuase, fighting for wages is simply far-fetched. But I was wrong, Drinker was interested, and interviews were then arranged and more meetings were convened in October 1854, between the potential hirers and the potential hirees – in this case, Messrs. Hunter and Drinker.

[1] Lin's first principal thinking in dealing with foreign powers had been simply - 以夷制夷, literally translated as "let barbarous people subjugate their own kind." Since at the time, the problem at hand came chiefly from the British, he had therefore become quite affable with the American, particularly anti-opiate-proliferation Quakers. Although Hunter was no Quaker, he was very eager to rub shoulders with H.E., the Imperial Commissioner and to offer his service. Before long Hunter had become Lin's sounding board in brain-storming ideas in his dealings with the British. One of Lin's first tasks, when ordered by Emperor Tao-kuang, Daoguang (p), 道光帝 to subpress illegal importation of opium, was to establish a trsnalation bureau 譯館 under his command. A core function of the bureau was to translate English journals and periodicals circulated at Treaty Ports of China. Hunter was said to have helped Lin in the screening process to select interpreters to work in the bureau, in fact, two of the appointees - Yuen Tak-fai, Yuan Dehui (p), 袁德輝 and Leung Jun-tak, Liang Jinde (p) 梁進德 - were his schoolmates at the Anglo-Chinese College 英華書院 in Malacca where Hunter studied Chinese, whereas Yuan and Leung English. In 1839, Lin drafted a communication he intended to send to Queen Victoria and had it translated in English by Yuen. To make sure its accuracy, and the appropriateness of the tone of the language, Lin asked Hunter to render the English translation back into Chinese so that improvements could be made. This is how Hunter recalled the matter:

An English translation of a communication addressed by His Excellency, soon after his arrival, jointly with the superior officers of the Canton Government, to Her Majesty the Queen of England, on the subject of the opium trade, was brought to me at the Consoo House to be translated into Chinese, as a test of the proper reading of the original, which turned out to have been made by my old schoolmate Shaow-Tih [Yuen]...

2010 photo of the last standing fort in Kau-tong (round structure on the left), by X.F. Wang.

An agreement was reached before the month ended. Drinker's mission was to assemble an assault team of men and vessels, and manage all the preliminaries including procurement of weapon, munitions and provisions; and all other logistical works. He was to lead his men as well as a posse comitatus to be assembled by the counties to attack and capture all five forts and turned them over to the counties. For his service, the counties would pay him 50,000 Spanish silver dollars - if and when he attained a complete victory. Hunter had his clerk, a Portuguese named Fonseca (whom I believe to be Jose Maria de Fonseca, Jr.) to draft up a formal instrument of agreement. The agreement was duly executed by all parties including Hunter, although I do not know exactly what his part was in the agreement. (Surely, I'd love to read the agreement, a copy of which, I believe, is kept at the U.S. State Department archive or the Congressional Library.) An advance of $20,000 was then paid to Drinker to facilitate the preparations. The advance payment, according to Article 4 in the agreement, were be returned in full if Drinker failed to proceed with the enterprise.

Pursuant to the signing of the agreement, the counties began to mobilize by calling up their militia and arming vessels intended for the imminent fighting, and waited for Drinker's cue. When there were no words from Drinker for more than two weeks, Leang, and the counties' gentry, began to feel quite uneasy. Then on November 13, they finally made contact with Drinker who told them he would back down from the deal unless there was an official consent from the Qing authority, fearing that the enterprise might incriminate him and his men since they would be fighting Chinese nationals, on Chinese soil, and without doubt killing some along the way. Leang, although totally dismayed by the ill-timed afterthought, promised that he would have an official consent arranged. And he did; a very resourceful man he was indeed. Drinker and Hunter received from Leang, five days later, a written commission form the Canton authority which appointed Drinker a Qing military officer. According to Lieutenant G.H. Preble^[1] of the United States Navy, Drinker was given a commission of a Chinese admiral. Drinker and Hunter were very pleased with the extraordinary appointment, and while on the subject of government consent, Leang asked the two, repeatedly and in very explicit language^[2] if there was anything to fear from the U.S. government for them to initiate a battle in China acting under the auspicious of a Chinese military commission. "There was nothing to worry about", was the short and simply reply. That obstacle removed, the party again confirmed that the raid would take place in a week's time. People in the counties, subsiding their grunts for now, were again strung up for the imminent battle. The week passed, and nothing was heard from Drinker. It wasn't until November 28^[3] when Drinker told Leang that he was to withdrew completely from the agreement and meanwhile not able, in any way, to assist with the retaking of the forts, owing to a prohibition issued by the U.S. Minister to Qing Empire, Robert Milligan McLane 麥蓮(o) (b.1815-d.1898). He told Leang further that the money advanced to him had been expended in getting the expedition ready. All he could do was to sell off the provisions and have the proceeds returned.

George Henry Preble. Credit: The US Navy Department Library. [1] George Henry Preble was put in charge of protecting American personnel and interests against Chinese pirates and Taiping rebels by Commodore Mathew C. Perry in 1853. Preble was dismissed from the navy in 1862 for permitting the Confederate steamer Oreto to run the blockade off the harbor of Mobile. He was reinstalled as a commander in the following year. I found a letter by President Abraham Lincoln addressed to the Senate concerning Preble's nomination, which I wish to share with our readers. Unlike James Armstrong, mentioned in this post earlier, Preble was not a Confederate sympathizer; he was guilty of having made a tactical error. One surrendered a naval base to the South voluntarily, the other failed to stop a rebel ship at the blockade on his watch; the fates of these two Union naval officers afterward were very different. Armstrong retained the rank of commodore but was never called to active duty to the day he retired. Preble was sacked, reinstated after a year, and promoted to the flag rank in 1876 (rear admiral, September 30).

February 12, 1863 To the Senate of the United States:           On the 4th of September, 1862, Commander George Henry Preble, United States Navy, then senior officer in command of the naval force off the harbor of Mobile, was guilty of inexcusable neglect in permitting the armed steamer Oreto in open daylight to run the blockade. For his omission to perform his whole duty on that occasion and the injury thereby inflicted on the service and the country, his name was stricken from the list of naval officers and he was dismissed the service.           Since his dismissal earnest application has been made for his restoration to his former position by Senators and naval officers, on the ground that his fault was an error of judgment, and that the example in his case has already had its effect in preventing a repetition of similar neglect.           I therefore, on this application and representation, and in consideration of his previous fair record, do hereby nominate George Henry Preble to be a commander in the Navy from the 16th July, 1862, to take rank on the active list next after Commander Edward Donaldson, and to fill a vacancy occasioned by the death of Commander J.M. Wainwright.                                                                       Abraham Lincoln

[2] Speaking ambiguously was (or may be still is), for Chinese, particularly those of privileged upbringing or are learned, not a matter of good manners, but a course of conduct. In short, Leang was dead serious about this.

[3] There is a dispute over the date on which Drinker informed Leang he was to withdraw from the agreement entirely. According to Preble, he went to Whampoa on December 5, where he found Drinker getting ready for the expedition. He warned Drinker not to proceed and told him to report to McLean immediately.

That was Leang's version of the story he submitted to the U.S. Consul in Canton, Oliver H. Perry, on October 24, 1855 in conjunction with his filing of a lawsuit in the U.S. Consular Court against Sandwith Drinker and William C. Hunter. The damage in matter was 20,000 Spanish silver dollars. Quaker Sandwith Drinker, the would be soldier of fortune, after all, fought no battles in China, except a legal one, in which he was named a defendant.

Kingqua, founder of Tienpow Hong. Credit: 《廣東十三行考》.

Leang King-kwa, the claimant, should not be mistaken as a gofer for some small town gentries. His real name(s) was Leung Lun-shu, or Liang Lunshu(p), 梁綸樞, alias Leung Shing-hei 梁承禧, alias Leung Gung-sun 梁栱辰, alias Leung Sing-fan 梁星藩 (b.1790-d.1877), of Whampoa. Leung was the owner of Tienpow Hong 天寶行, a second tier trading house of the Co-hong 公行, which was a guild of thirteen trading houses (sometimes more than thirteen in number, and other times less) appointed by the Qing government to handle foreign trade in Canton, also known as the Thirteen Factories 十三行. Foreign merchants were only permitted to trade with the Co-hong, which acted as their guarantor 保商 to the Qing authorities, for proper behavior and payment of all duties and levies. Firms in the Co-hong worked together as a price fixing guild, and generally supported each other financially. Tienpow Hong was founded by Leung's father, Leung King-kwok, or Liang Jingguo(p), 梁經國 (b.1760-d.1837) in 1808. Like the other Hong bosses, Leung's father was called by a name that ended with a suffix “Guan” 官, an official style bestowed by the Qing authorities. Somehow, possibly by lost in translation, it became common for foreign merchants to adopt the name “Qua” instead of Guan; his, therefore was Leung King Qua, or simply Kingqua 經官. Leung succeeded his father in 1827 as head of Tienpow and became known as Kingqua Jr., Kinqua II, or Shai Kingqua (shai 細 means small, junior, etc.). Leung was praised by international press in 1817 for his benevolence towards an English trader, a Mr. Anderson, and his family as such act of generosity, the press reasoned, was not found among Chinese. The story continued to be cited/repeated at least to 1870^[1].

[1] This was how John Lock [Locke], a merchant of Walthamstow, told it; the same was later printed in the Quarterly Review published in London, 'The Hong Merchant had known Mr. Anderson intimately and had large transactions with him. Mr. Anderson met with heavy losses, became insolvent, and, at the time of his failure, owed his Chinese friend upwards of eighty thousand dollars. Mr. Anderson wishes to come to England in the hope of being able to retrieve his affairs; he called on the Hong Merchant, and in the utmost distress explained his situation, his wishes, and his hopes. The Chinese listened with anxious attention, and having heard his story thus addressed him - “My friend Anderson, you been very unfortunate – you lose all – I very sorry – you go to England – if you more fortunate there, you come back and pay – but, that you no forget Chinaman friend, you take this, and when you look on this, you will remember Shai-king-qua;” - in saying these words, he pulled out a valuable gold watch, and gave it to Anderson. 'Mr. Anderson too leave of his friend; but he did not live to retrieve his affairs or to return to China. When the account of his death, and of the distress in which he had left his family, reached Canton, the Hong merchant called on one of the gentlemen of the factory who was about to return to Europe, and address him in the following manner - “Poor Mr. Anderson dead – I very sorry – he good man – he friend – and he leave two childs – they poor – they have nothing – they childs of my friend – you take this for them – tell them Chinaman friend send it,” - and he put into the gentleman's hand a sum of money for Mr. Anderson's children amounting to several hundred pounds."

Once ranked fifth among the Hongs in its hey-days, Tienpow had fallen into an appalling financial state at the time when Leung took it over from his father. Business had suffered from the mounting conflicts between Canton government and the British East Indies Company, Tienpow's principal client/counterpart, as well as the sharp increase in tea export from Ceylon to the West. That, and the ever heavier exaction from officials helped lessen profit and escalate borrowing. The year next following Kingqua Sr.'s death (He died in 1837; his death was reported in London by the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register), Tienpow was on the brink of bankruptcy, owing the government close to 300,000 taels of silver in outstanding tax and levies, and the foreign merchants more than one million Spanish dollars in debts. Leung, who inherited a debt that amounted to no less than $800 million in today's money, I dare say was a stouthearted man with an iron constitution. He kept the firm running and his head above the water. To preempt the possible domino effect triggered by Tienpow's clear and present failure, the Hongs bailed Leung out by collective efforts, with some help from the office of the Viceroy of Liangguang 兩廣總督. The debts were restructured and new credit lines were opened to provide cashflow. In the next following two years, Leung had made several generous donations to the Canton authorities oiling his relation with the officials, which helped relax the urgency in paying up his tax bills. By the time Leung succeeded in turning his ailing firm around, he faced a problem too great for him to overcome -  the overall future for Co-hong had, on a whole, become very dim. The implementation of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 (followed by the Treaty of Wanghia 望廈條約 and the Treaty of Whampoa 黃埔條約 both in 1844) was in every way a death sentence passed on Co-hong. The monopoly held dear by Co-hong was instantly voided, with the opening of five treaty ports in Canton, Shanghai, Ningpo (Ningbo), Fuchow (Fuzhou), and Amoy (Shamen) whereat foreign merchants could trade with anyone. Against such a backdrop, Leung remained active in the mercantile world, but was reduced to a much lesser figure.

All good stories, as I've learned, have more than one edition, our Drinker Expedition is no exception. Here's William C. Hunter's version. The slight problem with this is that, the self-styled 'chronicler of early Canton' Hunter had a habit of not dating the events he kept records of. My own guessing works help in some cases but fail in most.

Sketch Map of Canton, December 1857. Credit: Peter Davis' website.

Leang (Hunter called him Leung) came to see Hunter and told him that he had been authorized by the Canton government to offer 250,000 Spanish silver dollars to any party which would rid the Tsang-poo Village 增埗村^[1], and the islet lied across the river, of Red Turban rebels. The authorities were particular in favor of hiring foreign mercenaries to be led by a Westerner commander, and in whose hand, the Qing army would put the command of three thousand regular soldiers, forming a part of his expedition force. They would be fighting an enemy three times their size, commanded by rebel general Ho-a-luh. The "jackpot" of the operation, Leung continued, was teas looted by the rebels and tucked away in Tsang-poo - a staggering twenty thousand chests, or 550,000 dollars in market value. Leung wanted those as his own spoils of war, and quite obviously the Canton government didn't need to know about it. Leung asked Hunter to be his partner in this enterprise. He, as the recruiter and the government agent, should remain in the shadow as a hidden partner. Hunter, an old China hand with a good amount of respect from the provincial government, would be the figurehead. Hunter, Leung rationalized, being unfamiliar with such undertaking, should in turn hired someone experienced to organize and lead the expedition. Hunter said he would think it over, and in the mean time, being seriously interested in the deal, decided to make a field trip to Tsang-poo with the aim to size up his potential opponent. Ho-a-luh, a name commonly referred by foreigners, was, I believe, Ho Luk, or He Lu(p), 何祿 alias 何六, a river-smuggler-turned-rebel-leader who had led the uprising in Shilong county in Dongguan 東莞石龍 on June 17, 1854. Hunter went to Tsang-poo with the British Consul in Canton and were received quite hospitably by Ho and his henchman Chin Heen-lang. Chin, I believe, was Chan Hin-leung, or Chen Xianliang(p), 陳顯良, a rebel general in his own right, who had led the uprising in Xinzao county in Panyu 番禺新造 in May 1854. The rebel generals were led to believe that the visitors were sympathetic to their cause and that they were quite positive that the rebels would eventually prevail against the Qing Empire, so much so that Ho was prospecting foreign investment to the dual. He even showed the Hunter party a riverfront site where he reckoned their compatriots could build factories (warehouses). The generals were either very naïve or Hunter simply made up the story for his book (which after reading (partial) of his books, I am not surprised at all if he were). Hunter's mind was set to go ahead with this enterprise, although I fail to understand what compelled him to rush into a seemingly haste decision. He simply could not possibly professionally assess the strength and effectiveness of Ho's army of eight to ten thousand men, and a flotilla of hundreds of armed dinghies and longboats. Two days after the reconnaissance trip, Hunter met Leung in the office of Mingqua 明官, a low ranking Co-Hong merchant named Poon Man-to, or Pan Wentao(p), 潘文濤, the name of his firm was Chung-woo Hong, or Zhonghe Hong(p), 中和行, and there an agreement was signed. Leung gave a bond of 250,000 Spanish dollars payable, in Hunter's own words, “on the island being washed clean of rebels”. Leung also paid 25,000 dollars in cash to Hunter as “bargain money”, which I gather was like seed money. Contrary to what I said earlier about Hunter making a short list of whom to hire, there was no list, long or short. Sandwith Drinker was the first person who came to his mind, and to whom he immediate sent a dispatch and asked for a meeting in Canton. Three days later Drinker arrived and Hunter went over the proposed operation with him. Drinker was on board instantaneously.

A corner of the Tang-poo Park, or Zengbu Park (p) 2009 photo. [1] Tsang-poo (referred to as Tsing-poo or Tsing-hae in some documents) is the area located in the vicinity of present day Zengbu Park 增埗公園 in the Liwan District 荔灣區 abutting the Zengbu River 增埗河 to its west. For centuries, it had been the threshold to Canton from the west for river transport, and for invaders. The most recent (in relation to the Drinker story) one was British navy and marines, which landed there on May 24, 1841 to lay siege to Canton during the First Opium War. The fighting was later referred to as the Battle of Canton.

As the active partner in the enterprise, Drinker was to take complete charge of the expedition while Hunter, the self appointed silent partner, the money man. He told Drinker to draw whatever money from him when required. They discussed the logistical requirements of the expedition, and afterward Drinker left Canton and went to work. In a short while Drinker managed to assemble a full complement of fighters-for-hire he wanted for the task force: 125 men he recruited from Whampoa, Hong Kong and Macau, all hooligans and thugs. People who wanted to get rich quickly or die trying, no less.

A lorcha. Credit: London Illlustrated, January 10, 1857 issue. [The Hornet probably was bigger].

Those from Hong Kong and Macau were ferried to Whampoa, the homebase of the expedition on board the Hesus-Maria, a lorcha he bought in Macau, and soon after had the name of the ship changed to Hornet. When Hunter saw Drinker's regiment of sailors and ex-soldiers of English, American, Indian, Filipino, African and Macau origins, he gave an astute description of this lot, “an extraordinary assortment of dare-devils that can be imagined”. Drinker's second-in-command was Captain W.R. Creasy, an American who had just left his ship in Hong Kong, the barque Pathfinder from California, and found his way to Whampoa^[1]. The expedition flotilla under the command of "Admiral" Sandwith Drinker consisted of four vessels. Yes, Drinker was given a commission of a Qing admiral – with a formal instrument of appointment completed with patterns of dragons, etc., which Hunter took credit for procuring. The four vessels were Hornet, the lorcha, and three cutters: Vigilant, decked, about eighty tons; the Rough and Tough and the Rough and Ready (names befitting the men they were to carry to war), of about twenty tons each, half deck. Weapons and munitions were purchased and distributed to the four vessels according to the number of men each would carry. Additionally, a six-pounder gun was purchased and temporarily stored at Hunter's warehouse, which would be mounted on the Hornet at the last minute. The expedition partners wanted to keep the enterprise as secretive as possible, but how could they? It had already become the talk of town in all of Hong Kong, Macau, Canton and Whampoa, the only thing people not knowing for sure was where exactly were they going to hit. With respect to the "jackpot", the partners agreed that it was important to snatch the teas and transport them to Canton as soon as possible, that way the partnership would still prevail even if the expedition failed (to expel the rebels from Tsang-poo). With that in mind, Hunter had ordered all the ships of which he was agent to stand ready: River Bird (about eight hundred tons, commanded by Captain De Vol), Canton, Soames, and the Spark. At last, all were ready. Hunter then met with Leung and told him the attack, according to Drinker's battle clock, was to be made on Tsang-poo tomorrow at midnight, and that he should notify the Qing army to move their three thousand soldiers to rendezvous with Drinker's. Due to Hunter's habit of not dating events, even an important one such as this, I have no way knowing when the raid was supposed to take place.

The barque Parhfinder, Chinese Schoo. Credit: National Maritime Museum. [1] It is hard to image why Creasy left his ship and made himself a mercenary, for he was such a commendable ship captain, which I have proof. The passengers of the Pathfinder, during their passage from San Francisco to Honolulu, were so appreciative of the attention they were given by Creasy that they held a meeting on December 19, 1853 in Honolulu for the purpose to draft a commendation to honor Creasy that they posted as a general notice in the January 14, 1854 issue of Daily Alta California (probably in some other journals as well). The signatory of the notice had included David L. Cregg, the U.S. Commissioner to Hawaii. [The notice is too long to be posted here, anyone interested in reading it may go to this site of the California Digital Newspaper Collection.]

In the morning of D-day, at 11am, Hunter received a note from Robert Milligan McLane, the highest U.S. authority in China, asking for a meeting at “the earliest convenient moment”. McLane, who was expected in Canton in several days, arrived from Shanghai on D-day, to make sure D-day was not to be. McLane told Hunter, as they met a moment later, to end the expedition immediately as it was a U.S. policy to remain neutral in all affairs between rebels of any style and the Qing government^[1], except when American lives or interests were threatened. He wanted no private civilians of the United States to play private soldiers in China, stirring up complications in international affairs in a most sensitive time. Certainly not on his watch. Drinker's action was considered extremely grave, Hunter was told, especially since he had defied warnings by U.S. diplomatic and military officers to stand down. Hunter explained Drinker's commission as a Chinese admiral and that he imagined Drinker would act loyally and without breach of international law. Before he could go on, he was bluntly told that it was a matter of simply hear and obey. Hunter sent off a fire dispatch to Drinker who received it in Whampoa at 3pm, and there the Drinker expedition was brought to a full stop. Drinker swiftly paid off the men, restored the three cutters to their owners, and sold the lorcha, arms, ammunition and other supplies. When that was done (probably in a few days), he was then “brought” (quite understandably unwillingly) by Captain William J. McCluney of USS Powhattan, East India Squadron, into the presence of McLane. I believe McLane took no further action against Drinker, he simply wanted to keep the Admiral he retired in sight so to be sure nothing untoward would take place with respect to the proposed attack on Tsang-poo before his own departure form China on December 12, and never to return. Taking into consideration Mclane's departure date and the date when Preble saw Drinker to warn him, I would say D-day was definitely after December 5 and probably before December 10, 1854. Historic records showed that on December 7, 1854, Yeh Ming-ch'en or Ye Mingchen(p), 葉名琛, Viceroy of Liangguang, referring to the advance of the rebels, wrote to John Bowring (b.1792-d.1872), the newly installed fourth Governor of Hong Kong, and British Minister Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade in China, that, “as British ships of war are in the river for the purposes of protection, it is proper that we should act in concert in the important design of destroying and capturing these offenders.” His proposal was refused on the ground of neutrality. Was the timing of Yeh's diplomatic note in any way connected to McLane's termination of the Drinker expedition? In my view, quite probable, Yeh knew he had the foreign mercenaries no more and tried and explored other options. If that was the case, D-day would most likely be December 6, 1854.

Robert Milligan McLane (1858), by George Peter Alexander Healy. Credit: U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers. [1] Following the fall of Nanking (Nanjing) and Shanghai, respectively in March and September 1853, to the Taiping Rebels (revolutionists, as they are more often referred to these days), the American government was increasingly concerned about the possible overthrow of the Qing empire. McLane, when appointed Minister to Qing China in October 18 1853, was told by the (Franklin) Pierce Administration that he had the authority to recognize the de facto government and deal with it. If, however, China were to be divided up, he should seek to stabilize U.S. relationship within each area. McLane was tasked to press for unrestricted trade without any specific privileges. He arrived in Hong Kong on March 12, 1854 and found Yeh Ming-ch'en too busy (dealing with potential uprisings) to conduct diplomacy. Oddly, at that time, diplomatic intercourse was not conducted in Peking (Beijing), but in Canton and focused on one man, the Viceroy of Liangguang. Yeh, in fact, had never consented to grant an audience to any foreign envoy, and was known to show himself hostile on all occasions. Getting nowhere, McLane went north to Shanghai and Nanking to meet Taiping leaders and came away with a better appreciation of the true nature of the revolt. He felt strongly that the Taiping leadership was more difficult to deal with than the imperial court. For the best interest of the United States, it was better for the ailing Qing court to remain in power, and the U.S. should not refrain from the use of force as means to to win concessions, as did the British and the French, and end the humiliation of foreign envoys and merchants. In the big scheme of things, the untimely Drinker expedition was nothing more than a nuisance, nonetheless, it was better to stop it than to speculate its probable developments.

Hunter, after sending the dispatch to Drinker on D-day, went and told Leung what had happened. Leung was prostrated by the news, but soon regained a calm composure. The episode, however, was far from over. Soon enough, the Canton officials who paid 25,000 dollars (or 20,000, according to Leung's version of the story) to the expedition partnership were on Leung's back pressing for a full refund. As merchants, the way Hunter had put it, nobody in the partnership wanted to entertain the idea of refunding any part of the bargain money, let alone a full refund, but the officials were not letting up on Leung, the only person in the partnership they could lay their hands on. After a time, Leung came up with a plan that he told Hunter would get everyone in the partnership off the hook (and at the same time reaffirmed his own standing as a patriot). He began, “We are old friends of twenty-five years, have had very large transactions together, and I know you to be an honest man. The Mandarins are stupid and ignorant of foreign customs. I see a means of checkmating the imperial treasurer,”, and then asked Hunter if he had any objections to be tried before the Consular Court in the matter of the bargain money. Hunter told Leung his was a brilliant plan as he saw zero possibility that the U.S. Consular Court would rule in favor of a Chinese claimant; furthermore, its judgment would not be challenged by any provincial officials because they didn't want anything to do with foreign envoys, thus ending the whole affairs. That decision made, Leung went to the U.S. Consul in Canton, Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr., and took out a summons against Hunter and Sandwith, in consequence a tribunal was established to hear the case. Hunter was very friendly with one of the judges sitting in the tribunal, a Henry W. Hubbell, who worked for Mingqua. It was in his office where the mercenary contract was signed. The tribunal was convened in Perry's office, and there the books of accounts of the partnership, with the account current – bargain money were submitted, examined and found to be in order. They were then certified to, consular seal and signature attached. When the official proceedings were over, the tribunal judges, the defendants and the claimant “pottered about” (Hunter knew how to choose his words) the office a bit. Before Leung took leave, he shook everyone by hand in great glee. He told Hunter once outside the Consulate, that this would be sufficient to silent the Canton officials, “as the Mandarin would be a mortal funk at the sight of the Consul's official seal;” Hunter reckoned the Tsang-poo affairs ended in the most satisfactory manner, as far as accounts were concerned.

There you have it, the two versions of the story of Drinker - the soldier of fortune. There were distinct discrepancies between Leung's prepared statement submitted to Perry and what Hunter wrote in his book 'Bits of Old China'^[1]. Here are the significant ones: the employer: gentry of township vs. office of the Viceroy of Liangguang; the enemy: pirates vs. rebels led by Red Turban generals Ho Luk and Chan Hin-leung; objective: recapture forts of Kau-tong (south of Canton, between Whampoa and Bocco Tigris) vs. expel rebels from Tsang-poo (north west fringe of Canton); local military support: county militias vs. 3,000 soldiers of the Qing regular army; the remuneration: $50,000 vs. $250,000; the date when Drinker/Hunter terminated the agreement unilaterally: November 28, 1854 vs. December 6, 1854 (as I earlier figured). Of course, there was the fat spoils of war of the looted teas worthy of half a million dollars in Hunter's version, which even if true, could never be mentioned in the claim. Unfortunately, the truth will never be known whether the litigation was, after all, a show staged by master corruptor, Kingqua II, and his accomplice, W.C. Hunter; or it was a genuine claim made by merchant and patriot Leung Lun-shu smeared by Hunter in order to dramatise the characters and events his book. If it was a charade, what then was Drinker's part?

[1] The first edition of the book 'Bits of Old China' was published in 1885 in London, eight years after the death of Leung Lun-shu, otherwise known as Kingqua II. By then, Hunter had left China and was probably living in France. He died six years later in Nice.

The proceedings of the case of [Leung] King Kwa vs. Hunter and Drinker was recorded quite extensively. The case files, not in the wildest dreams of Leung, Hunter and Drinker, went from the Consulate in Canton to the States Department in Washington (per letter sent by William Bradford Reed to Lewis Cass, Secretary of States dated February 1, 1858), and from there to the White House, and to the Senate, under the category of 'Correspondence of the Late Commissioners in China'. In 1868, the files went further to the House of Representatives, as a part of the documents the Executive Office disclosed to the Congress following a resolution passed on January 17, 1868 calling for information regarding claims of U.S. citizens in China. The disclosed documents were generally cataloged 'Claims Against China'. Despite their journey through the White House and the Capitol, I doubt if anyone there had ever read the Drinker case files. The files include documents dated between October 24, 1855 and December 15, 1859, which lay out in chronological order the official history (not hearsay) of the Drinker expedition story - the litigation part.

Leung initiated the litigation against Hunter and Drinker, all three were contracual parties in the mercenary contract, on October 24, 1855, ten months after the aborted Drinker expedition, by submitting a prepared statement to the U.S. Consul in Canton, Oliver H. Perry^[1], who had the extraterritoriality jurisdiction in Canton^[2]. On the following day, Leung submitted further a letter addressed to Perry generally repeating the contents of the statement and requesting justice from the Consular Court, this, probably, was a formality required by Perry for him to open the case. Exactly two months passed and on December 25, 1855, Perry threw the case out on technicality. In his ruling he cited that it had been the uniform policy of the United States to avoid all interference in disputes related to, or to mingle in belligerent operations of, other nations; and the existence of legal enactments against individual citizens to make war on their own authority. With respect to the particular circumstance in China, he wrote, U.S. citizens residing and sojourning in China had been made aware fully the rule of strictest neutrality. They had been reminded (warned rather) repeatedly by U.S. consular officials in China, viz. a circular issued by Vice-consul in Canton, Daniel N. Spooner^[3], on September 27, 1853; a proclamation issued by Minister to China, Humphrey Marshall (b. January 13, 1812, Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky – d. March 28, 1872, Louisville, Kentucky; Minister to China 1852-54) on October 1, 1853; and another by McLane soon after his arrival in 1854. Based upon these policy and practices, and regulations set forth by the Ministers, he ruled the mercenary contract unlawful, “From this it is evident that such a contract as it set forth by the complainant as having been entered into between himself and Mr. W. C. Hunter, and Mr. S. Drinker, has been denounced as illegal, and against the public policy of the United States, and it is a well settled rule of law that a contract in violation of law, or against public policy, cannot be enforced. This court, therefore, cannot lend its aid to enforce a contract that is illegal, and against the public policy of the United States."

[1] Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. 裨理(o) (b. August 9, 1825, New York - d. November 17, 1870, London), Consul in Canton from February 25, 1855 to 1866, was the son of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. He served as his father's secretary in Japan at the time when the Convention of Kanagawa was negotiated and subsequently signed on March 31, 1854. Before taking up civil appointments, Perry was in the United States Navy as a midshipman from February 28, 1829 to July 3, 1835 before receiving a commission as a Lieutenant on February 25, 1841. He was charged with the guns on board the one-year-old USS Albany, which formed a part of the Naval Battery at Vera Cruz in March, 1847 commanded by his father during the Mexican-American War. He resigned his commission on July 23, 1849.

[2] Article XXI of the Treaty of Wanghia, entered into on July 3, 1844 by and between the United States and the Qing Empire, reads, “Subjects of China who may be guilty of any criminal act towards citizens of the United States, shall be arrested and punished by the Chinese authorities according to the laws of China: and citizens of the United States, who may commit any crime in China, shall be subject to be tried and punished only by the Consul, or other public functionary of the United States, thereto authorized according to the laws of the United States. And in order to the prevention of all controversy and disaffection, justice shall be equitably and impartially administered on both sides.”

[3] Daniel Nicholson Spooner (b.unk., Plymouth, Massachusetts – d. August 1869, Boston), went to Canton in 1837 and worked as a clerk in the American opium firm of Russell & Co. He became a partner in January 1843 and retired to Boston on December 31, 1845. He returned to China again as a partner in January 1852, finally retiring in 1857. He was U.S. Vice-consul in Canton from 1853 to 1854.

Surely this was not what Leung (and Hunter, if he was indeed the co-conspirator) had in mind, the case simply needed to be tried in order for the account of the cash advance (bargain money) to be settled one way or the other. Leung, however, made no attempt to appeal after the ruling was handed down, or perhaps an appeal was not available. [Nothing I have read suggested there were appeals against the decisions of U.S. Consular Court(s) in China, but what I did find out while researching this subject is that sojourning Americans in China were entitled to the right to appeal from 1906, with the creation of the United States Court for China 大美國按察使衙門(o)^[1].] Something had to be done to salvage the thrown out case. On January 30, 1856, a Richard Perkins Dana sent a short note to Peter Parker, the U.S. Commissioner Plenipotentiary to China (August 16, 1855 – August 25, 1857), writing on Leung's behalf asking for an appeal, and together with his note, Dana sent Parker the pertinent documents of the case. Parker was the paramount U.S. diplomatic representatives exercising judicial functions in China from December 31, 1855 (the date he commenced operating his office in Macau) to August 25, 1857. An appeal, now I know, could be entertained after all, but in a rather informal fashion through the channel of a fixer, in this case an influential American. The choice of Richard P. Dana seemed odd, but proved effective. Dana (b. May 25, 1810, Marblehead, Massachusetts – d. February 17, 1894, New York), son of the Rev. Samuel Dana, the sixth minister of Old North Church in Marblehead, was a remote cousin of Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (b. August 1, 1815, Cambridge, Massachusetts – d. January 6, 1882, Rome), the famous attorney, politician and author of the book: Two Years Before the Mast (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1840). Richard Perkins Dana and Richard Henry Dana were direct descendants of Jacob Dana (b. February 2, 1655) and his brother Daniel Dana (b. March 20, 1663) respectively. Jacob and Daniel were sons of Richard Dana of Cambridge and his wife Ann Bullard. Dana's granduncle Francis Dana (Richard Henry's grandfather) was, amongst other very prominent public positions, the Chief Justice of Massachusetts (1791-1806). Dana, Leung's fixer, was a merchant and the retired New York representative of the opium firm Russell & Co. (1836-1850, he was also listed in 1849 as a senior partner of the foremost American trading firm in Canton Olyphant & Co.), who lived and worked between New York (in Manhattan with his family), Canton and Hong Kong. Leung's choice of Dana as his fixer made the conspiracy theme more probable, noting that Hunter, himself, was a partner of Russell & Co. (ca.1830-ca.1853). Unless Dana had a score he wanted to settle with Hunter, or he had become a part of the Leung/Hunter plot of litigation smoke, he probably would do no such thing as putting his former colleague of fifteen years in a needless legal entanglement. [I sound quite corrupted myself, don't I?] What if Dana was assisting Kingqua II because he believed his compatriots had committed iniquity and therefore he had to right the wrong. Dana was acquainted with Parker, professionally, at least from 1838. Whether the two had known each other before that, I cannot tell, but they were both from Massachusetts, and their hometowns (Dana, Marblehead; Parker, Framingham) were only thirty one miles apart.

L.R. Wilfley (possibly front row right), A. Bassett (possibly front row left), F.E. Hinckley (clerk of court), Hubert N. O'brien (U.S. Marshal), 1908, Shanghai. Credit: Twentieth Century Impression of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China. [1] The United States Court for China was a U.S. District Court empowered with extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. citizens in China, however; Americans tried by this court were entitled to fundamental rights only; the Constitution did not apply. Appeals were taken to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. The U.S. Court for China was created on June 30, 1906 under the Consular Reform Acts. Lebbeus Redman Wilfley (b. March 30, 1866, Audrain, Missouri – d. May 26, 1926, Greenwich, Connecticut) was appointed the first judge (1906-1908). Wilfley, a Yale Law School graduate (1892), had practiced in St. Louis, until handpicked for the post of Attorney General of the Philippines (1901-1906) by his senior in law school and fellow member of the Linonian Society, William Howard Taft. Taft, who would become the 27th President of the United States in 1909, was at the time Governor-General of the Philippines. The untried Judge Wilfley, upon receipt of his judgeship of the only U.S. district court outside the United States, left Manila for Shanghai in June 1906 along with his assistant since 1903, Arthur Bassett, also from Missouri. Bassett (b.1878), who received a LL.B. degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1902, was made the first District Attorney of the Shanghai court, a position he held until 1910. The last judge to sit on the Shanghai bench was Milton John Helmick (b.1885-d.1954) of Albuquerque, New Mexico (1934-43). From 1906 through 1943, the court had transcended in China the demise of dynastic reign, and seven changes of governments (not administrations) during the first 32 years of the Republic, and still this gross violation of the sovereign rights of China was allowed to continue unopposed. In 1926, there were 121 Western and Japanese consular courts in China - what absurdity! 37 years and 5 judges later, on January 11, 1943 the U.S. Court for China was closed for good, consequent to the signing of the Treaty between the United States and ROC for the Relinquishment of Extraterritorial Rights in China and the Regulation of the Related Matters. The treaty was a part of the United States' courtship with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek intended to keep him (and therefore ROC) actively in the Allied war camp, which has nothing to do with the Drinker story, and I think I have distracted myself enough over this. I wasn't aware of the existence of the U.S. Court for China until now, and probably am not alone, hence this brief side trip.

Parker wrote Perry a letter on January 24, 1856 in an unusually harsh tone, before he received the Dana letter requesting an appeal, and inappropriately even before his own judicial function in China became official, which would take another one week. Was Leung, alias Kingqua II, on his back? I cannot tell. They had known each other ever since Parker's first arrival in China in 1835. In the letter, he told Perry bluntly that the Consular Court in Canton (in another word, Perry) had not done its job properly in respect of the Drinker case, “to decide upon its merits without a hearing is to prejudge the case and manifestly objectionable.” He told the 31 years old U.S. diplomatic representative in Canton the importance to uphold fairness and justice in handling claims from the Chinese against U.S. citizens, as it would be imitated on the part of the Qing authorities, and Perry should avoid even the semblance of refusing a fair hearing. The impartial and just magistrate should be made a patent to all concerned, he continued in the letter, whether Americans or the Chinese. He told Perry to reexamine the case, if the scope of the case was within the Consul's purview, he should hear the case. Parker, when this letter was written, had just arrived in China (for the last time) in his new capacity as commissioner plenipotentiary. So what made the Drinker case such a pressing issue that His Excellency, Peter Parker, M.D., B.D., etc. had to take care personally, probably before he had a chance to unpack? If Perry had replied to Parker, or they had met afterward to discuss the case, I would have it picked up, but I found nothing.

The next communication, dated February 14, pursuant to the Dana letter, came also from Parker to Perry in which Parker told Perry to admit the appeal (although no appeal had ever been filed officially by the claimant), “As an action on the case of assumpsit, it is clearly cognizable by the consular court.” He went on to instruct the poor Perry, former USN lieutenant, the first full-time U.S. Consul appointed to Canton, and the son of the mighty Commodore Matthew C. Perry, to assemble a tribunal, “summon to your aid not less than two nor more than three U.S. citizens of good repute and competent to the duty, and proceed to hear the case.” A deadline was set by Parker for the hearing, “either on or before the first Wednesday of March”, which fell on March 7, 1856. There again, I fail to see the significance in which the case must be tried before the date specified by Parker. Enclosed with his letter was Parker's action on the appeal, in which he pointed out the petition of the claimant was not to compel Hunter and Drinker to proceed according to the contract, viz. to capture the forts and surrendered them to the county gentry, if that was, said Parker, Perry's decision to throw out the case would be correct. The suit that was brought to the Consular Court, continued Parker, was to compel the defendants to return $20,000 or to show good cause why they should not. He reasoned further that the defendants had received the money for a contract they were parties, in violation of U.S. laws, but instead told the claimant there was nothing to fear from the authorities of their own country. He said that after a due investigation of the case, he was sending the case back to Perry, “with instructions to proceed, and how to proceed therewith.” In closing, Parker told Perry it was okay with him if the parties decided to leave the subject to arbitration so long as it was done before the deadline. This sounds to me an obvious hind – arbitration was the way out for everyone: the award of which would be assured – in favor of Hunter and Drinker; the matter was handled promptly and fairly by the U.S. extraterritorial judiciary mechanism; and the final award of the case had nothing to do with the U.S. authorities. Am I to understand all these, the harsh letters and the sending the case back to Perry, etc., were all part of the charade? [I think I am getting immersed in conspiracy theories, or just plain cynical.]

From there the matter went like clockwork; Leung, Hunter and Drinker immediately agreed to refer the case to binding-arbitration. By February 19, five days after the date of the Parker Perry letter, an arbitration agreement had already been signed by the parties in dispute and forwarded to the arbitrators appointed by Perry (but mutually chosen by the parties, I imagine): Captain Henry Wilson Hubbell of Fairfield, Connecticut, merchant, Canton agent for The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, manager of Canton Co-hong merchant Mingqua, and close friend of Hunter; and Daniel Nicholson Spooner, U.S. Vice-Counsul to Canton (1853-54), partner of the opium firm Russell & Co. (1843-45, 1852-57), and colleague of Hunter for ten years. Would Leung, a shrewd businessman, accept these choices of arbitrators, were he not part of the bogus scheme? Ultimately impossible! When Hubbell and Spoonser returned their decision on April 10, 1856 in favor of their compatriots, they made a point of saying that were the two parties in dispute American citizens, their decision would have been rendered on the day the case was placed in their hands. For the satisfaction of the Chinese, they had delayed in order that the claimant might introduce evidence or argument to sustain their position. Leung's argument in his original petition was refuted point-by-point in the arbitration decision. The critical one was pertaining to Article 4 in the mercenary contract, which stated that the Americans should return the advanced sum of $20,000 if they were to withdraw from the enterprise in case of cowardice, deceit, or any false action on their part. The arbitrators found the Americans not in any such default; the enterprise could not be effected because its was interfered by Robert McLane as well as officers of the United States Navy, with the threat of severe punishment upon Drinker. The claim the Americans were alleged to have made that there was nothing to fear from their authorities had no bearing on their positions, as it formed no part of the written contract, and was not supported by any evidence. The arbitrators were convinced that McLane's interference was unexpected and disproved by Hunter and Drinker, and the records showed (I have no idea which record they were referring to) the strongest possible protest from Drinker. The accounts of the expedition were examined by Hubbell and Spooner and found in order, supported sufficiently by vouchers. Drinker, they determined, was not extravagant in the expenditure of money, or he paid more for provisions or munitions of war than was paid by others. The account balance showed the sum of $1,902.51 due to Drinker from Leung. The arbitrators awarded that Leung had to pay, and thus formally closing the case. [I have to be honest and say that the outcome of this bogus scheme had exceeded my expectations, turning the table. Et le voilà, the debtor became the creditor.]

As if what had been presented of the case wasn't confusing enough, Drinker wrote to Parker on April 21, i.e. ten days after the arbitral award, in which he mentioned he had made a statement of his own on the case (I have no idea whether he meant a prepared statement or one taken during one of his interviews with Perry), which he said had been held by Perry. The Drinker Statement was never mentioned let alone introduced as evidence, till this letter came out after the lawsuit was formally closed, and I can't find it in the Houses documents either [likewise, I can't find the mercenary contract which was introduced as evidence]. Drinker also said no contract was ever agreed or signed between him and Leung. If that was true, it becomes clear for the first time that Hunter and Leung were the only signatories in the contract (as he had said so in his book – Bits of Old China). But were this factual, why was Drinker named a defendant, and what was he doing muddling along in a lawsuit he had no business in, legally? In his letter, Drinker dedicated the bulk of its contents to accuse Parker of mishandling the case. Firstly, for falsely reversed Perry decision and reopened the case pursuing only Leung's statement, which Drinker dismissed as a tissue of falsehoods, made out for Leung by some meddling friend, who had no idea of the real merits of the case, while his version was completely disregarded. Drinker particularly mentioned that Mingqua (Poon Man-to of Chung-woo Hong, in whose office, said Hunter, the mercenary contract was signed), who was a close friend of Parker, could attest to the existence and the factual correctness of his statement. Secondly, for falsely claimed in his Action for Appeal of February 14 that due investigation of the case had been conducted, but in fact neither of the co-defendants were ever asked by Parker for their testimonies. Drinker pointed out further, it had been his wish and he had made that known to Perry early on to have the matter full investigated, however no investigation was ever conducted by the American authorities or the arbitrators. Thirdly, for intimated a possibility of fraud on the part of Hunter and Drinker, of which he wrote, “under the presumption that we might avail of the disinclination of the American authorities here to adjudicate in the matter as being an affair which they considered interfering with laws of neutrality established by United States.” When he was done with protesting and accusing, Drinker switched to a more (or perhaps his usual) pragmatic self and asked Parker to assist in expediting the payment of the awarded amount of $1,902.51 from the Chinese, of which he said, “as the amount awarded is the property of others, for which I am responsible.”; whoever these “others” might be. It was interesting how Drinker, who was sued for $20,000, felt such an urgency to recover the sum of $1,900 he didn't consider he was owed days ago. It also occurs to me Drinker wrote this post-litigation protest for no other reasons than to clear his reputation as a man concerned with his legacy [I suppose I will never find out whether that concern was more than with revealing the truth]. At the time when this letter was written, had Drinker forgotten his partner in the enterprise and co-defendants in the lawsuit, William C. Hunter, Esq., as the letter was send solely in his name, or had he figured Hunter wasn't so much concerned with his legacy? Or, was Drinker innocent of any bogus litigation process in this lawsuit? That, I guess, will remain a mystery.

The Illustrated London News, March 28, 1857. The caption reads, "Examination at the police-office, Victoria, Hongkong, of Esing, the baker, upon the charge of poisoning."

Drinker did not live to see Leung's payment of the arbitration award, [I reckon Leung never had the intention to pay] he died on January 17, 1858 allegedly from eating bread poisoned with arsenic a year earlier in the morning of January 15, 1857 while hosting some British and French naval officers for breakfast in Hong Kong. The bread was supplied by Esing's Bakery 裕盛辦館, whose regular customers had included more than 400 foreign households and the Hong Kong garrison barracks. Arsenic were administered to all the Esing's bakery products on that day; whoever behind it had the intention of poisoning (either killing or seriously harming) the bulk of the bread-eating community in Hong Kong. A number of people had taken seriously ill, but no one died directly from consuming the poisoned bread. Esing's owner, Cheung Ah-lum 張亞霖, alias Alum, and nine of his employees were bought to trial on February 2, 1857. Drinker was called as a witness to testify (not because he ate the bread, but because he had business dealings with Alum and was physically present at the bakery on January 14, one day before the poisoning occured) on the second day of the trial that would take five days to complete. As had been proven time and again, Sandwith Drinker was never too far away from an interesting, at times, mind-boggling, story. Sadly, this was his last. In another time, I will tell the story of “Sandwith and the Arsenic Bread”.

Epilogue

Sandwith Drinker kept a journal in which he wrote about his seafaring life in the East; the journal was published in 1990 in Boston under the title: A Private Journal of Events and Scenes at Sea and in India: Commencing April 26th, 1838.

Drinker's wife, Susanna Budd, took the family back to her hometown in Baltimore, Maryland in 1858^[1] after burying him at the (Old) Protestant Cemetery in Macau. Drinker's friends had raised $12,000 to pay for their passage home and get started in America, whether because the Drinkers were in financial difficulties or it was the thing to do at the time I do not know. Once settled in Baltimore, she opened and ran a school there - Mrs. Drinker's Academy for Young Ladies – until she died in March 1860 from endometrial cancer. Susanna was survived by four children: Catharine Ann, Robert Morton, Henry Strugis and Elizabeth Kearney.

[1] There are a couple of sources that say that at one point of the homeward journey, Catharine Ann, age 16, drinker's eldest daughter, navigated the ship because its captain was drunk [let's hope that the captain wasn't William Sleemen]; but that's not all, it was also because the first officer was not proficient enough in reading the charts. [I hope the Drinkers received a full refund for their passage.] If there is any truth in these records, Catharine Ann certainly was a gifted student of her father.

The Henry Sturgis branch of the Drinker family, far more than those of his siblings' (the fact is I am still unable to tell if his siblings actually had children), has grown to be prosperous with outstanding descendants, and it probably wasn't a legacy of Sandwith Drinker. Henry Sturgis was the first Drinker (and the only boy) born in the Orient. He was eight when his father died. After the funeral his mother brought the family back to her home town in Baltimore, and there he was introduced to his own country and its culture. Two years later his mother died and he was looked after by his sister Catharine Ann, who was but a teenager at the time. In 1865, when he was fifteen, Catharine moved the family to Philadelphia where they settled into a house owned by their cousin Ann Elmslie, nothing, however, was said they became Elmslie's ward. In fact, the Drinker children had been very independent and had never sought support, that I have read about, from their father's siblings, some of them were still around in the 1860s-70s: Henry (d.1868), Hannah (d.1869), Elizabeth (d.1874), Sara (d.1877), or any of their remote cousins, for instance, Col. Henry Waln Drinker (d.1866), a developer of substance who also owned the Drinker's Beech, which the colonel's father inherited from his uncle Henry Drinker, who was in fact the Drinker children's own great-grandfather. On the maternal side, their mother had a brother named Anthony J. Shober. The only thing I can find of him was actually his name so I gather he wasn't anywhere near the Drinker children. The absence of Shobers in Baltimore might be the reason that the children moved to Philadelphia following their mother's death, although not immediately. Catharine's incredible sense of responsibility, love for her brothers and sister, and her resolve and toughness certainly helped shape Henry Sturgis' character. Robert Morton, an army major and engineer, very likely was another role model for him. Unfortunately, information about Robert Morton is very scarce. Furthermore, there ought to be a mentor behind Henry Sturgis' success, possibly someone associated with the Lehigh Valley Railroad company. I believe it was this mentor who counseled Henry Sturgis into taking up law studies, which was uncommon for an engineer and a tunnel designer. Regardless who might had the strongest influences in his early years, Henry Sturgis was, clearly, the renaissance man of the Drinker family for the Twentieth Century. His was a successful migration story, but of a different sort than the one Philip Drinker, his sixth great-grandfather, began in 1635. I have listed the descendants of Sandwith Drinker towards the end of the post.

A Chinese Sampan Girl ca.1852 by Geroge Chinnery. Alloy and Assor were two models Chinnery used for most of his sampan girls. Would either Alloy or Assor be Hunter's woman? Credit: Hong Kong Museum of Art.

William C. Hunter left China for the United States no later than 1885. He moved to France around 1885 and died on June 25, 1891 in Nice at the age of 79. He had two sons, James C. Hunter and William C. Hunter (Jr.), by a Chinese woman of Macau (name unknown but said to be a Tanka, or Danjia(p), 蜑家 or the boat people that traditionally lived on fishing boats in coastal Guangdong). She was most probably his kept woman, or protected woman as it was some time called. Both James and William were born and raised in Macau, and they both went to the U.S. and fought for the Confederate in the American Civil War. James was enlisted on June 11, 1861 in Louisville, Kentucky as a private in the 6th Kentucky Cavalry (Muster Roll), and was promoted to sergeant on February 15, 1865, and first lieutenant on June 15, 1865 before mustered out on September 6 the same year. William received a commission as a second lieutenant on July 21, 1863 in Winchester, Tennessee, and was soon mustered into the same outfit as James. He died on December 16, 1864 in Louisville, Kentucky.

An illustration entitled "Insurgent Chief Nominally Commandinmg 15,000 Men". Credit: London Illustrated January 27, 1855.

Chan Hin-leung 陳顯良, the rebel general Hunter described as second in command of Ho Luk 何祿, was nobody's henchman. Chan, a furniture-maker-turned-fisherman-turned-rebel, was in fact from Kau-tong who led approximately one thousand men in an insurrection on May 30, 1854 in Xinzao 新造, a township ten kilometers north of his hometown. As his popularity grew, by August when he mounted an unsuccessful attack on Canton from the east, he already had with him 20,000 men. In that winter, the number of his troops doubled: 10,000 of his own new recruits plus another 10,000 men commanded by Ho Luk, who came to reinforce him. This means Ho was Chan's de facto henchman, not the other way round as Hunter had noted. With 40,000 men in his hands, Chan hit and penetrated the east and south fringes of Canton respectively in December that year and in January 1855, but fell short of seizing the city. When the government forces counterattacked in March, a combined unit of troops commanded by Viceroy Yeh Ming-ch'en 葉名琛 and militias from Shawan and Kau-tong pushed Chan out of Xinzao. Badly beaten, Chan regrouped what was left of his rebel army in Shawan and afterward went north to Hunan 湖南; nothing was written about him thenceforth. I found no records that showed Ho Luk being involved in fighting on the west fringe of Canton, or Tsang-poo. The rebel leaders who took charge of attacking Canton from the west were Li Wenmao 李文茂 (July 1854), and Zhou Chun 周春 and Gan Xian 甘先 (January 1855). Li Wenmao, a strolling-player-turned-rebel-general, was pushed out of Canton in March by Imperial forces. He, together with four other rebel generals, captured Xunzhou 潯州 (present day Guiping in Guangxi 廣西桂平) in September 1855, and there they established the Kingdom of Da Sing 大成國, and proclaimed themselves kings. In Bits of Old China, Hunter wrote an epilogue for his version of the Drinker expedition story, in which he said Chan Hin-leung, after being defeated at Tsang-poo by Imperial focres, came to see him approximately two months following the aborted mission of the expedition (roughly in February 1845) and told him in good pigeon English (so now the Chinese furniture maker was well-verse in English, pigeon notwithstanding), that back then they (Ho and Chan, and their 10,000 men) would have left Tsang-poo in peace had he (Hunter) paid them $10,000 (a dollar apiece!). “My contract was not purposely to kill, slay, and destroy, but to clear the place of Ho-a-luh and his followers. And how cheaply it might have been done!”, Hunter, chronicler of early Canton, concluded.

According to the (Extended) Panyu gazetteer 番禺縣續志, battles were fought in March 1855 in Shawan 沙灣 and Kau-tong 茭塘, between Red Turban rebels infested in the area belonging to the camps of Chan Hin-leung and another rebel general Lam Kwong-lung, or Lin Guanglong(p), 林洸隆 of Mengyong village 番禺蜢涌村, and the combined units of local militias and Imperial troops commanded by general Shen Dihui 沈棣輝. The local militias were led by none other than Leung Lun-shu 梁綸樞, alias Kingqua II, and former Imperial official He Ruoyao 何若瑤. The engagement, commenced on March 6, lasted three days, in which Leung and Ho inflicted a crushing defeat on the rebels. The brutal mopping up operations carried out by Leung's militias reportedly had 500 rebels beheaded a day in average; whereas the killing went on for weeks. Fighting and slaying weren't the only thing Leung did for his country, he was also said to have raised $400,000 from local businesses which he gave to the Canton government, as a loan, to fund the military campaign against the rebels. His relation with the government ran aground when the officials refused to retire the loan after the rebellion was stamped out, as promised. Nothing of substance was written about him after the rebel conflicts in 1854-55, except that during the Second Opium War he (and Howqua, or Wu Bingjian(p) 伍秉鑒, head of the foremost Co-hong firm, the E-wo Hong 怡和行) was asked by Bogui 柏貴, the Manchu acting governor of Canton province (1857-1860) of the puppet government installed by the British and French forces, as his special envoys to the headquarters of the foreign occupation forces. Leung died in June 1877 at the age of eighty eight, and took with him the secret of his own true character. Was he a master corrupter, a patriotic merchant, or a brutal militia captain, or a bit of each?

Yeh Ming Ch'en, Viceroy of Liangguang.

Yeh Ming-ch'en 葉名琛 (b.1807-d.1859), Baron of the First Rank (1848) and the youngest Viceroy of Liangguang ever appointed (1852-58), was praised as a military virtuoso who led a tiny garrison in Canton of 5,000 Banner (Manchu) troops 八旗兵 and 4,000 Green Standard (Han) troops 绿营兵 to quell the Red Turban Rebellion. His opponents had over 200,000 men. The fact is, he had helps. Tens of thousands of militias were called up from the fourth quarter 1854 and were led to battles fighting rebels by local gentries. Braver and fiercer than the Imperial troops, the militias were also known for their brutality when exacting revenge on the rebels for wreaking destruction upon their villages or townships. It was said that no less than 100,000 rebels were executed in the mopping up operations that began in March 1855, no doubt the militias had more to answer to for the atrocious act than their uniformed counterpart. John Bowring, Hong Kong Governor and British Minister Plenipotentiary in China, who turned down Yeh's request for help in December 1854, sent the British fleet upriver from Hong Kong only weeks later and allied them with Yeh's forces in Canton. He also gave permission for Chinese vessels transporting food and ammunition from Hong Kong to Yeh's camps to fly the Union Jack aboard. These actions alone were sufficient to deny the rebels their vital river traffic and thereby drying up their supplies and separating them into smaller pockets, without having the British forces to actually engage in combat. Clearly, Bowring was no friend of Yeh, he was merely watching over the British interests in China. Those interests would be jeopardized, he knew, should Canton fell in the hands of the rebels, or much worse, if the Red Turban expanded northward and merged with the Taiping. He would help Yeh win this war (under the pretext of protecting sojourning Britons in Canton); but  it would be a different story when the two became entangled again in war, as adversaries – the Arrow War, or the Second Opium War (1856-60). Yeh had to lose, he would make sure of that. When Yeh was captured on December 29, 1857 the same day Canton fell to the British and French forces, Bowring had him sent to Hong Kong and kept on board HMS Inflexible. The warship set sail on February 15, 1858 with its Chinese prisoner-of-war for Kolkata (Calcutta). Yeh was imprisoned in Tollygunge until he died on  April 9, 1859; he might have starved himself to death. His body was later returned to China for burial. It is ironic that the xenophobic Yeh should spent his final days on foreign soil only to be surrounded by people alien to his kind.

Robert Milligan McLane, Minister Plenipotentiary to China, returned to the United States on December 12, 1854. He held several high profile public appointments before he died in Paris in 1898: Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico (1859-1860), Governor of Maryland (1884-1885), and Minister Plenipotentiary to France (1885-1889).

I found no information on Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. after he left the post of U.S. Consul in Canton in 1866, except that he was never married, and he died in London on November 17, 1870. He should not be confused (one should try very hard) with his cousins (sons of his uncle Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry): Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. who was born in 1813 and died in infancy in 1814; and Oliver Hazard Perry, Jr. (b.1815-d.1878) who married Elizabeth Ann Randolph and after Randolph died Mary Ann Moseley.

His Excellency Peter Parker, legation-interpreter-turned-Commissioner-Plenipotentiary-to-China, once healer of 50,000 heretics in the Middle Kingdom, sacked missionary, former(?) man of God, was recalled by the U.S. State Department and left China for good on August 25, 1857. Parker was a hardliner well-known for his belief that China, faced with the challenge of the Western Christian nations, must either “bend” or “break”, whether at the point of a lancet (or a lance) or at gunpoint; the means seemed not so important. He was described as the man who “opened China to the Gospel at the point of a lancet, as he later did still farther through (gunpoint) diplomacy” by Harlan Page Beach 畢海瀾(o), in the Introduction Note of the book, Pioneer Missionaries of the Church. The Rev. Beach was a former China missionary (1883-1890), the Educational Secretary Student Volunteer Movement (1895-1906), and Yale's first professor of theory and practice of missions (1906). Parker was not the only active-aggressive evangelist at the time, there were others like him, who wouldn't shrink from the possible use of force to achieve their aims. The Rev. David Abeel 雅裨理(o) of the American Reformed Mission, who was in China from 1830 to 1831 and again from 1841-1845, had this to say about evangelizing there, “God has often made use of the strong arm of civil power to prepare the way for his own kingdom.” Jehu Lewis Shuck 淑士人(o) wrote the following in his journal, when describing the slaughter of Chinese soldiers by British navy and marines during the First Opium War, “I regard such scenes... as the direct instruments of the Lord in clearing away the rubbish which impedes the advancement of Divine Truth.” The Rev. Shuck was the first American Baptist missionary to China, and the first (co-)editor of the Quaker controlled newspaper in Hong Kong, the Friend of China, which was also the first non-government paper. I find the sentiment behind these comments quite chilling as they were so expressly and unashamedly made. However, I want to believe that these were but isolated cases, that this sentiment wasn't shared by colleagues of the named American missionaries, and surely it formed no part in the modus operandi of evangelistic work in China at the time... so long as the like of Karl Gützlaff is to be ignored.

I recently came across a discussion on the internet centered on the topic – Epilogue, how long is too long? Well, if you have read through all the above, you can clearly tell how long is too long. Congratulations!

- END -

(o) Official Chinese name, each one unique, designated either by the Qing government at the time or commonly used by historians later on.
(p) Pinyin Romanization.

Appendix I
Muscle Bought: Mercenaries in Nineteenth Century China
(Updated February 20, 2014)

Unlike Drinker and his men, there were foreign mercenaries, in the hundreds or even more than a thousand in number, who actually fought in China during the second half of the 14-year conflict of the Taiping Rebellion, particularly along the Shanghai-Ningbo front. Here are some of the more famous ones.

Frederick T. Ward. Credit: Library of Congress (US)..

Frederick Townsend Ward 華爾 (b.1831–d.1862) of Salem, Massachusetts, an off and on coolie trader in China since 1851, raised and led an army of Western deserters and Filipino mercenaries in 1859 in Shanghai to fight Taiping rebels. The troops, he named Shanghai Foreign Arms Corps 洋槍隊, was bankrolled by two merchants: Wu Xu 吳煦 and Yang Fang 楊坊, both frontmen of the provincial government in Shanghai. Ward became a naturalized Chinese in 1861, and was appointed a Qing major-general 參將 the following year. He had also married the daughter of Yang Fang, his paymaster. His corps, which has since grown to be over 5,000 men strong after incorporating the Chinese troops trained in modern soldiering discipline, was renamed the Ever Victorious Army (EVA) 常勝軍. Despite the propitious nomenclature, Ward had in fact lost battles far more than he had won. His last was an attack on a Taiping strong point at Cixi 慈溪 (60 kilometers north of Ningbo 寧波) on September 21, 1862. He was shot in the stomach at the moment of attack by a stray bullet and died on the following day in Peter Parker's house at Ningbo.

Edward Forrester 法爾思德 (b.1830-d.1901) of Clayton, New York, EVA's second in command, had followed Ward in Shanghai since 1859. He was captured by Taiping rebels in June 1862 and was released three months later in exchange for weaponry and ammunition. Forrester was offered the command of EVA after Ward died. Not only did he decline the offer, but he also resigned his colonel commission in EVA. He returned to the U.S. with a young Chinese he named Usa (as in the USA) H. Forrester [Forester](b.1849-d.1901). The young Forrester moved to Lansing, Michigan in 1869 and, years later, became a successful businessman and a prominent figure. In 1887, Usa Forester was acclaimed “Lansing’s Pride!” along with eleven other manufacturers, merchants and tradesmen on the 50th anniversary of Lansing’s founding. Edward Forrester killed himself in 1901. Were his withdrawn behavior and the eventual suicide the results of happenings that had taken place during his captivity in 1862?

Henry A. Burgevinen.

Henry Andres Burgevine 白齊文 (b.1836–d.1865) of Ashford, North Carolina, another Ward's henchman who had also followed Ward since 1859, landed the top job in EVA and was promoted to the rank of major-general. Problems began to surface between Burgevine and his paymaster regarding pay to the army towards the end of 1862, which led to an incident in the following January where he struck the corps' financier and disappeared with 40,000 silver dollars. With a price on his head, Burgevine did the unthinkable and defected to Taiping, taking with him no less than 120 American and European officers. Burgevine was later captured by Imperial troops and while under escort to Suzhou 蘇州 from Fujian 福建 in May 1865, he was reportedly drowned. There were other reports, however, that said he was tortured before finally executed. EVA would no longer be commanded by mercenaries after Burgevine's defection. The next two commanders were both secondments from the British forces: John Yate Holland 約翰荷蘭德, a Royal Marine captain; and Charles George Gordon 查理喬治戈登 of the Royal Engineers, better known as “Chinese” Gordon. EVA was disbanded in 1864 upon the eventual suppression of the Taiping Rebellion.

George Macartney (b.1867, Nanking -d.1945), son of Halliday Macartney and Lady Gao; British Consul-General, Kashgar (1891-1918). Credit: Fascinated by the Orient: Aurel Stein 1862-1943.

Samuel Halliday Macartney 馬格里 (b.1833-d.1906) of Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway, was another British secondment. In 1863, he was given the command of the Songjiang 松江 garrison of more than 1,000 men. Songjiang was a critical buffer between Shanghai and the rebels. While there, he had established a small firearms workshop, which was in fact China's first. After several expansions and change of locations in the next two years, the workshop (dubbed Macartney's Arsenal 馬格里局) would become China's first full-scale firearms plant -- the Nanking Arsenal 金陵制造局 (1865- ). The plant was managed by Macartney until 1875. Halliday Macartney was neither a soldier nor an engineer, he was an army surgeon who had previously served in Godron's unit and was at one time secretary to Burgevine.  Some time after 1863, he left the British Army and was hired independently by Huai Army 淮軍 commander Li Hongzhang 李鸿章, who had a soft spot for Western medicine doctors and had always kept a few in his camp. There was even a reference that said he had been naturalized as a Chinese. In 1876, Macartney went home to Britain, but singularly in the capacity of the councilor and English secretary to the Qing Ambassador in London^[1]. He played an important role in defending the Chinese legation for having kidnapped Sun Yet-sun in October 1896, for that he later received special commendations from the Qing court. Macartney pulled off his most daring stunt in 1864 when he married the niece of Taiping brigadier, Gao Yongkuan 郜永寬 who also carried the rank of Na Wang 納王 (Prince of Satisfied). Gao, charged of the Suzhou city garrison, surrendered the city to the Imperial forces in exchange for safe conduct for himself and his accomplices. He was captured and executed by the Imperial troops on December 4, 1863, the very day he had the city gates opened to them. The execution was ordered by Li Hongzhang, the man who promised Gao's quarter. Li was Macartney's boss.

[1] Guo Songtao 郭嵩燾 (1818-1891) was the first Qing resident diplomat sent to U.K. (1876-1878), in fact he was the first resident diplomat sent to a European country in the history of China. His official title was Imperial Commissioner Emissary to England.

J.D. Morton 馬惇 was one of the American EVA defectors who went to the Taiping camp with Burgevine. He rejoined EVA after Burgevine's death and was restored to his previous rank of major. I've just learned that the term “double-defector” actually exists.

Vincente Macanana was the Filipino assistant of Ward. He was responsible for recruitment and training.

James Edward Cooke.

James Edward Cooke 葛格, a former Royal Navy captain, joined EVA in 1861 and was soon given the command of EVA's steamship Paoshum. He was subsequently transferred back to fighting on land. He was in charge of Ward's security detail on the day when Ward was shot. In October 1862, the command of the Ever-Secure Army 常安軍 (ESA) of Zhejiang 浙江 was transferred to EVA, Cooke was put in charge of the unit. ESA was an army unit similar to EVA but smaller in strength. It was organized by Roderick Dew in May 1862; Dew was previously captain of HMS Encounter. After Gordon took over EVA in 1863, Cooke left the corps and re-activated ESA with hundreds of his followers. The new ESA was quickly welcomed by the Zhejiang provincial government, providing financial support and a base in Ningbo. Cooke was made a Qing major-general and would continue to command the corps until his death in 1881.

In addition to EVA and ESA, there was a ETA, which stood for Ever-Triumphant Army 常捷軍. ETA was organized and commanded by French Naval officers (who were either in active duty or purposely put on leave) for the Qing government, as such it was not to be regarded a mercenary force, or a force led by mercenaries. The French naval officers charged of  ETA, in succession (I hope I am getting this right), were Prosper Francois Marie Giquel 日意格,  Albert-Édouard Le Brethon de Caligny 勒伯勒東, Tarding de Moidrey 買忒勒, and Paul-Alexandre Neveue d'Aiguebelle 德克碑.

Not all foreigners fought in the Taiping Rebellion conflict were soldiers of fortune, some fought for a cause they believed in.  Augustus Frederick Lindley 呤唎 (b.1840-d.1873) was a former British merchantman captain who, together with his Portuguese wife from Macau, Marie (maiden name unknown), joined the Taiping camp voluntarily in 1860. He returned to Britain in 1863 after Marie was killed in action and he himself wounded in the same battle. Others got themselves involved in the war in more bizarre circumstances. Patrick Nellis, an English silk trader, was taken prisoner by the rebels in 1864 along with a band of Westerners, mostly merchants. They were forced to fight for the rebels with Nellis as their leader for eight months until they escaped during a major retreat of the rebels. The odd thing was, the band was given 4,000 dollars a day as wages.

I started out to write a few lines about other mercenaries fighting in China during roughly, the same period Drinker was supposed to fight his. When I'm done, it expands to 1,522 words, and is marginally qualified as a short story. I need more discipline.


Appendix II
The line-of-descent from Philip Drinker to Sandwith Drinker, and the genealogical data of the families

Philip Drinker (b. October, 1596, Exeter, Devon – d. June 23, 1647, Charlestown, Massachusetts), English immigrant from Exeter, arrived New England on October, 1635 with his wife Elizabeth (b.1603 – d. October 7, 1651) and their sons, Edward (b.1622-d.1700) and John (b.1627).

John Drinker (b. 1627, Exeter) married Elizabeth (b.ca.1625) in 1653. Elizabeth gave births to Joseph (b. March 31, 1653), Elizabeth (b. August 28, 1654), Mary (b. October 16, 1655 - d. ), Sarah (b. February 4, 1657) and Philip (b. May 28, 1659). All were born in Charlestown.

Joseph Drinker (b. March 31, 1653, Charlestown) married Ruth Balch (b.1665, Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts - d.1731) on March 31, 1683 in Beverly. Ruth gave births to Joseph (b. July 13, 1684 - d. August 17, 1742), Philip (b. January 12, 1686) and John (b. September 15, 1688). All were born in Beverly.

Joseph Drinker (Jr.) (b. July 13, 1684, Beverly – d. August 17, 1742) married Mary Janney (b.ca.1680, Cheshire, England – d. March 17, 1764, Philadelphia) on June 27, 1708 in Philadelphia. Mary gave births to Henry (b.ca.1709, Philadelphia – d.1764), Joseph (b.ca.1711) and John (b.C.1713, Beverly).

Henry Drinker (b.ca.1709, Philadelphia – d.1764) married Mary Gottier (b.ca.1713) on November 26, 1731. Mary gave births to John (b.1733 – d. July 27, 1800, married Rachel Renier on February 27, 1765), Henry (b. February 21, 1733 or 1734 – d. June 26, 1809), Daniel (b.1735 – d. November 25, 1815, married Elizabeth Hart in 1760 and Hannah Prior on April 16, 1796) and Joseph (b.1737 - d. August 23, 1809, married Hannah Hart, Elizabeth Hart's sister, on April 15, 1760 in Philadelphia ).

Henry Drinker (HD) (b. February 21, 1733 or 1734, Philadelphia – d.1809) married Elizabeth Sandwith (b. February 27, 1734 or 1735 – d. November 1807) on January 13, 1761. Elizabeth gave births to Sara (b. October 23, 1761 – d. ), Ann (b. January 11, 1764 – d. ), Mary (b. April 20, 1765 – d. ), William (b. January 28, 1767 – d. ), Henry (b. May 24, 1769), Henry Sandwith (b. October 30, 1770 – d. July 3, 1824), Elizabeth and his twin sister Mary (b. November 12, 1772) and Charles (b. March 14, 1774).

Henry Sandwith (b. October 30, 1770, Philadelphia – d. July 3, 1824) married Hannah Smith (b. November 26, 1773 – d. January 23, 1830) on December 11, 1794. Hannah gave birth to fourteen children, only nine lived to adulthood. They were: William (b. October 14, 1795 - d. February 18, 1836, married Eliza Rodman on April 9, 1818), Henry (b. July 15, 1797 – d. January 4, 1798), Esther (b. November 1, 1798 – d. August 1856, married Israel Pemberton Pleasants), James, (b. April 1, 1800 – d. November 1, 1801), Elizabeth (b. December 11, 1801 – d. July 11, 1874, married Samuel C. Paxson on July 5, 1827), Sara (b. May 9, 1803 - d. March 31, 1841, married James Canby Biddle on April 3, 1828), Henry (b. August 11, 1804 – d. , married Frances Morton), Hannah (b. August 11, 1804 – d. ), Mary (b. March 4, 1806 – d. ), Charles (b. November 19, 1808 - d. August, 1809), Sandwith (b. November 19, 1808, Philadelphia – d. January 17, 1858, Macau, married Susan B. Shober on March 17, 1840), Charles (b. August 5, 1810 – d. ), Edward (b. December 10, 1811 - d. August 27, 1812), Edward (b. March 16, 1813 - d. May 23, 1813).


Appendix III
Descendants of Sandwith Drinker
(updated February 20, 2014)

Listed by Generations

1st Generation
11. Catharine Ann Drinker; 12. Robert Morton Drinker ; 13. Henry Sturgist Drinker; 14. Elizabeth Kearney Drinker.

2nd Generation
131. Henry Sandwith Drinker; 132. James Blathwaite Drinker; 133. Cecil Kent Drinker; 134. Ernesta Drinker; 135. Philip Drinker; 136. Catherine Drinker Bowen.

3rd Generation
1311. Sophie Drinker; 1312. Henry Sandwith Drinker; 1313. Cecilia Beaux Drinker Saltonstall; 1314. Ernesta Drinker Ballard; 1315. Pemberton Henry Drinker; 1321. Henry Middleton Drinker; 1322. Sandwith Drinker; 1323. Mary “Polly” Drinker; 1324. James Drinker; 1331. Catherine McCall; 1332. Anne “Nancy” Sandwith Drikner Zinsser; 1333. Cecil Kent Drinker, Jr.

4th Generation
13121. Ann Drinker; 13122.Henry Drinker; 13131. Kent Saltonstall; 13132. Henry Saltonstall; 13133. Caroline Saltonstall Robinson; 13134. Ellen Saltonstall; 13211. Sandwith “Sandy” Drinker; 13212. John Rowe Drinker; 13213. Edward (Ned) Drinker; 13231. Henry “Hentzi” Drinker Elek; 13232. Francie Elek McComb; 13233. Daphne Drinker (Elek) Scullin; 13234. Susie Middleton Elek; 13241. Margi Drinker Dillon; 13321. Judith P. (Zinsser) Lippmann; 13322. Katherine J. Zinsser; 13331. Barbara Rotan (Drinker) Clapp; 13332. Alison Sandwith (Drinker) Brockway; 13333. Kent Gerrish Drinker.

5th Generation
131321. Elizabeth Sandwith (Saltonstall) Repenning; 131331. Winslow Robinson; 131332. Sophie Robinson; 132111. Watson David Roberts Drinker; 132121. Lauren Drinker; 132122. Alexander Drinker; 132131. Daniel Drinker; 132132. William Drinker; 132133. Emily Drinker; 133211. Sara K. Lippmann.

Listed by Line of Descent

11. Catharine Ann Drinker b.(1841-d.1923)

12. Robert Morton Drinker (b.1842–d.1898) was a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He was second in command of the engineer corps which operated in the big submarine mine at Hell Gate, New York in 1879. Robert Morton was seriously injured when a premature explosion of dynamite wrought havoc. He was hospitalized and probably because after a time mental illness had been developed from the traumatic brain injury he had suffered, he was transferred to and kept in the Sheppard Asylum in Baltimore, where he probably spent the rest of his life. Robert Morton broke out of Sheppard on July 18, 1894 and paid a visit to Baltimore Mayor Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe, but was promptly sent back to the asylum. From 1851, the Engineer Corps had been clearing obstacles from the Hell Gate strait with explosive, till around 1920.

Henry Sturgis Drinker.

13. Henry Sturgis Drinker (b.1850-d.1937) graduated Lehigh University (Leihigh Valley, Pennsylvania), School of Mines, in 1871 and later received a law degree from Lafayette College (Easton, Pennsylvania), and a LL.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1911. As a mechanical engineer and a lawyer, he was associated with the Lehigh Valley Railroad first with the design and construction of the Musconetcong Tunnel (opened in 1875 and closed in 1928) and later as the railway company's Solicitor General (1885-1905).
He was a devoted educator who served as President of the Lehigh University (1905-1920) and President of the Association of College Presidents of Pennsylvania (1917). Henry had developed a profound interest in military affairs, probably inspired by his brother Robert Morton; he headed the National Reserve Corps - Army ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) program - as its president (1913-1916) and the Military Training Camps Association as its chairman (1916-1919). He married Aimee Ernesta Beaux (b.1852-d.1939) in 1879; they had six children: lawyer and musicologist Henry Sandwith Drinker (b.1880-d.1965), business owner James Blathwaite Drinker (b.1882-d.1971), physiologist Cecil Kent Drinker (b.1887-d.1956), horticulturist Ernesta Drinker, inventor of the iron lung Philip Drinker (b.1894-d.1972), and historian Catherine Drinker Bowen (b.1897-d.1973). Aimee was the sister of famous portraitist Cecilia Beaux (b.1855-d.1942).

131. Henry Sandwith Drinker (b.1880-d.1965) was a partner (1918-1950s) of Drinker Biddle & Reath, a national law firm which is still running today. He was also an acclaimed musicologist and was appointed as an associate trustee and member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Fine Arts (1931). He received a Mus.D. Degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1942). Henry Sandwith married Sophie (Lewis) Hutchinson (b.1888-d.1967) in 1911. Sophie was a lifelong promoter of choral singing by women and a prolific writer, particularly about history of women and music. The Sophie Drinker Institute in Bremen, Germany, is named after her. They had five children: Sophie, Henry Sandwith, Cecilia, Ernesta, and Pemberton Henry

1311. Sophie Drinker

1312. Henry Sandwith Drinker (b.1914-d.2007) was trained as an engineer, who worked for an industrial instrument company, Foxboro Company in Massachusetts (1950-1976). He married school teacher Ruth Brooks (b.1914-d.2009) in 1942. They had two children: Ann and Henry.

13121. Ann Drinker (b.1942 or 1944-d.2009), received a Master of Education degree from the Leslie College and was a teacher. She married Earl K. Retherford (b.1942). Their children are: Amy Simon Retherford and Eric Brooks Retherford.

13122. Henry Drinker M.D. (b.1946) is an orthopedic surgeon. He married Deborah B. Barker (b.1949).

1313. Cecilia Beaux Drinker Saltonstall (b.1917-d.2009), following the footsteps of her parents, was a music lover and promoter. She played in the Philip Exeter Academy Orchestra (her primary instrument was viola) and was a former Chairperson of the Association of Chamber Music Players. She married surgeon Henry Saltonstall (b.1913-d.2008), who was a founder of the Exeter Clinic. They had four children: Kent, Henry, Caroline, and Ellen.

13131. Kent Saltonstall M.D. is an orthopedic surgeon who teaches at the University of Washington Medical School. He married his wife Inger in Norway. They have three daughters.

13132. Henry Saltonstall is a building contractor. His wife Margaret Chew Barringer is a poet, and founder of the American Poetry Center in Philadelphia. They have one daughter, Elizabeth Sandwith, who married Nelson Peter Repenning in 1997.

13133. Caroline Saltonstall Robinson (b.1946-d.2010) was a farmer and energy conservation activist. She received a Doctor of Education degree from Harvard University. The Caroline Saltonstall Building at Milton Academy, Milton, Massachusetts was named in her honor. She married environmental activist Nelson Buck Robinson (b.1939-d.2003). They had two children: Winslow and Sophie.

13134. Ellen Saltonstall teaches Anusara yoga and Kinetic Awarness. She serves as co-chair of the Curriculum Committee for Ansusara yoga. She collaborated with the late Hon. John A. Sbarbaro, Chicago Superior Court Judge, in their book, Mariage is on Trial.

1314. Ernesta Drinker Ballard

1315. Pemberton Henry Drinker (b.1921-d.1987) was an engineer. He played the Tigers Football team while in Princeton (1941). Pemberton learned to fly at young age. He served thirteen months of combat duty in the Pacific during the Second World War, flying fifty missions in a Marine F4U Corsair, and was discharged as a captain when the war ended. He was awarded a Soaring Society of America Silver Badge in 1975.

132. James Blathwaite Drinker (b.1882-d.1971) worked for the Mercer Rubber Company and the National Clay Refining Company before running his own company, J.B. Drinker & Co. He married Mary Frances Middleton Fisher (b.1896-d.1974). They had four children: Henry Middleton, Sandwith, Mary “Polly” and James.

1321. Henry Middleton Drinker , M.D. (b.1920-d.1999) was chief of pediatrics at Chestnut Hill Hospital as well as head of the nursing department; he retired in 1989 from Chestnut Hill after thirty seven years of practice. He married Marilyn “Sandy” Rowe, who lives in Pennsylvania. Their three sons are: Sandwith, John, and Edward.

13211. Sandwith (Sandy) Drinker married Marie Clark; they have three children: investment adviser Abigail Beaux, credit analyst Grace, and Judson. Abigail married Bryan D. Roberts, and they have one son: Watson David Roberts. Judson married Virginia Fishwick.

13212. John Rowe Drinker married Diane Giletto; they have two children: communications consultant Lauren and Alexander.

13213. Edward (Ned) Drinker married Diane Freedman; they have three children Daniel, William and Emily.

1322. Sandwith Drinker (b.1922-d.1945), a first lieutenant of the Twenty-Eighth Marines, was killed in action during the Battle of Iwo Jima in March 1945, and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star Medal. Below is the award citation.

CITATION: The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Silver Star (Posthumously) to First Lieutenant Sandwith Drinker (MCSN: 0-29234), United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity as a Machine-Gun Platoon Leader, attached to Company A, Fifth Motor Transport Battalion, FIFTH Marine Division, during action on enemy Japanese-held Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 13 March 1945. After leading his platoon to a strategic position in advance of the lines, First Lieutenant Drinker set up the guns in order to cover the advancing infantry with protecting fire. When one of the members of his machine-gun crew was wounded during the ensuing action, he braved heavy enemy fire in an attempt to evacuate the wounded man and again place the weapon in action. Although mortally wounded by hostile gunfire during this mission, he continued to direct his platoon with skill and effectiveness until he was himself evacuated, thereby enabling the infantry to advance successfully under strong, well coordinated covering fire. His outstanding leadership, extreme courage and gallant devotion to duty reflect the highest credit upon First Lieutenant Drinker and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

1323. Mary (Polly) Drinker (b.1925-d.2008) was the editor and past president of the Episcopal Church Women of Pennsylvania. She joined the staff of Natural Sciences Magazine and later became the editor-in-chief. Polly married Budapest-born economist Peter Stephen Elek (b.1922-d.2000), who was a former president (1981) of the New Jersey based Eastern Economic Association. They had four children: Henry (Hentzi) , Francie, Daphne, and Susie.

13231. The Very Rev. Henry (Hentzi) Drinker Elek is Rector and Dean (Conestoga) of St. Alban's Episcopal Church. He married Sara Frances Barton on December 28, 1990.

13232. Francie Elek McComb has a Doctor of Laws degree (1992) from the Villanova University School of Law. She is an in-house consul of a telecommunication company. Her lawyer husband, David F. McComb, works in private practice. He has a Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Pittsburgh and was formerly an Assistant U.S. Attorney. They have three children.

13233. Daphne Drinker Elek Scullin

13234. Susie Middleton Elek

1324. James Drinker (b.1928-d.1982, bur. Trinity Oxford Episcopal Churchyard in Philadelphia)

13241. Margi Drinker Dillon

[The revision made on January 17, 2014 about James Drinker and Poly Drinker are based on information provided by Margi Drinker Dillon (pers. comm. January 14 and 15, 2014)]

Cecil Kent Drinker, M.D.

133. Cecil Kent Drinker (b.1887-d.1956) received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1913. A pioneer in industrial medicine, Cecil Kent was associated with the Harvard School of Public Health for thirty two years, including the chair of Physiology (1923-1948), Assistant Dean (1924-1925), and Dean (1935-1942). He conducted respiratory physiological research for the United States armed forces during the Second World War, and contributed to the development of high-altitude oxygen masks and goggles for allied aviators. He married Katherine Livingstone Rotan, M.D. (b.1889-d.1956) in 1910, while they were both in medical schools (she was in Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania). They had three children: Catherine McCall (who died in infancy), Anne Sandwith, and Cecil Kent (Jr.).

1331. Catherine McCall (b.1916-d.1916)

1332. Anne (Nancy) Sandwith Drinker (b.1917) is a noted scientist in biochemistry. In 1941, she married her collaborator in scientific research, Hans Handforth Zinsser, who was the recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship Award (Biochemistry) for 1949 and 1950, and son of the famous bacteriologist Hans Zinsser, M.D. (b.1878-d.1940). They have two daughter, Judith and Katherine.

13321. Judith P. Zinsser is the professor emerita of history at Miami University in Ohio, a writer and an international authority on women in World History, and a former president of the World History Association (1996-98). Her late husband, John E. Lippmann, was a noted dramatist. Their daughter, Sara K. Lippmann, is an actress (stage and film).

13322. Katherine J. Zinsser is a senior vice president of a commercial bank. Her partner, Jonathan A. Neuberger, who holds a Ph.D. Degree from Johns Hopkins, runs an economic consulting firm.

1333. Cecil Kent Drinker, Jr., (b.1922-d.2008) graduated from the Harvard College, where he was later employed in the purchasing department. He married Joan Gerrish (deceased) in 1967. He married Susan Hemenway Bartol in 1981, who currently lives in British Columbia, Canada. He had three children with Joan Gerrish: Barbara Rotan Clapp, Alison Sandwith Brockway and Kent Gerrish Drinker, M.D.

134. Ernesta Drinker

Philip Drinker (right) and Louis Agassiz Shaw, inventors of iron lung

135. Philip Drinker (b.1894-d.1972), co-inventor of the iron lung

136. Catherine Drinker Bowen (b.1897-d.1973), historian

14. Elizabeth Kearney Drinker (1856-1919) married William H. Owen of Port Norris, New Jersey on May 6, 1882; they later moved to Spread Eagle, Pennsylvania, where she died. I found no further information on the couple.

[This is a partial list that I will keep updating till it is done, so please bear with me.]

Selected bibliography:
African Repository and Colonial Journal, vol. 17, (1841),Washington: American Colonization Society. American Information Web, U.S. Foreign Affairs, U.S.-China Relations [internet]. ancestry.com [internet]. Anglo-Chinese Calendar, (1847), Canton: Office of the Chinese Repository. Appel, Toby A., Lane, Todd A. (finding aid) (2003, Revised: 2011) Guide to the Peter Parker Collection, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Library. Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia, (May-August, 1838), The, London: Wm. H. Allen and Co. Beaumont, Roberts (1820) The Philadelphia Directory, vol 1820, Philadelphia. Berridge, Virginia, Edwards, Griffith (2010) Opium and the People / 'Britain's Opium Harvest' The Anti-Opium Movement, druglibrary.eu. Biddle, Henry D. (1893) The Drinker Family in America, to and including the Eight Generation, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, privately printed. Biddle, Henry D. (ed.) (1889) Extracts from the Journal of Elizabeth Drinker, from 1759 to 1807, A.D., Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company. Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity [internet]. bookrags.com [internet]. Boston Architecture [internet]. Bodge, George Madison, Soldiers in King Philip's War, Boston, 1906. Boston.com [internet]. Bowden, James (2007) The History of the Society of Friends in America, vol. 2, Whitefish Montana: Kessinger Publishing. Brune, Lester H. (2003) Chrononlogical History of U.S. Foreign Relations, vol. 1, 1607-1932, New York: Routedge. Callahan, Edward W. (ed.) (1901) List of Officers of the Navy of the United States and of the Marine Corps, from 1775 to 1900, New York: L.R. Hamersly & Co. Charlestown Land Records [internet]. Chesneaux, Jean (Ed.) (1973) Popular Movements & Secret Societies in China, 1840-1950, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. - Chicago Tribune (December 18, 2003). - China Repository [online]. - chinaforeignrelations.net [internet]. - Cochran, Sherman (1980) Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890-1930, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. - A Committee of the Alumni Association (1922) Biographical catalog of the matriculates of Haverford College, together with lists of the members of the college faculty and the managers, officers and recipients of honorary degrees, 1833-1922, Philadelphia: Haverford College Alumni Association. - Conroy, Hilary, Goldstein, Jonathan and Isreal, Jerry (eds) (1991) America Views China: American Images of China Then and Now, London: Associated University Presses. - Cornwall Chronicle, The, (December 31, 1845). - Craig, Neville B., Who's who in Pennsylvania; a biographical dictionary of contemporaries, vol 2, New York. - Creegan, Charles C. (1903) Pioneer Missionaries of the Church, New York: American Tract Society. - DistantCousin.com / Pennsylvania Obituaries - December 25, 1919 [internet]. - Doerflinger, Thomas M. (1986) A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, Merchant and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. - Drinker, Henry and Marilyn, Dr. and Mrs. Henry Drinker Collection of Miscellaneous Family Papers, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Collection #3125. - Egle, William H., Linn, John B. (1895) Record of Pennsylvania Marriages Prior to 1810, Pennsylvania: Clarence M. Busch. - Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania [internet]. - Farmer, John (1829) A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New-England, Lancaster, Massachusetts: Carter, Andrews, & Co. - Field, David D. (1862) Brief Memoirs of the Members of the Class, Graduated at Yale College in September, 1802, New-Haven. - findagrave.com [internet]. - Five College Archives & Manuscript Collections, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts [internet]. - Fleming, George D. (2009) Shamong, Chicago: Arcadia Publishing. - Founders Online [internet]. - Freemasons' Quarterly Review, The, (1846), London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper, Paternoster-Row; Madden and Co. - French, Paul (2009) Through the Looking Glass, China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. - Friend of China, (various dates). - Friends Hong Kong [internet]. - Fulham, Volney Sewall (1910) The Fulham genealogy; with index of names and blanks for records, Burlington: Free Press Printing Co. - Galloupe , Augustus A. (copied) (1907 ) Early records of the town of Beverly, Essex County, Massachusetts, vol. 1, Births, Marriages and Deaths, Boston: Eben Putnam. - gene.com [internet]. - Gilbert, Wesley (2011) Our Man in Zanzibar: Richard Waters, American Consul (1837-1845), honors theses – all, Wesleyan University. - Goldstein, Jonathan (1978) Philadelphia and the China Trade 1682-1846, Pennsylvania:The Pennsylvania State University. - Gordeon, Leonard (1957) Early American Relations with Formosa 1849-1870, Historian, vol. 19, no. 3, pp.262-289. - Griffin, Eldon (1938) Clippers and Consuls: American Consular and Commercial Relations with Eastern Asia, 1845-1860, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, Inc. - HartfordInfo.org [internet]. - Haverford Library, Quaker & Speical Collections [internet]. - Heiferman, Ronald Ian (2011) Cairo Conference of 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co. Inc. - Henson, Curtis T. (1982) Commissioners and Commodores: the East India Squadron and American diplomacy in China, Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. - Historians of Sterling Township [internet]. - Historical Society of Pennsylvania [internet]. - The Hong Kong Government Gazette, March 11, 1854; October 17, 1874. - Hoogenboom, Ari, Gustavus Vasa Fox of the Union Navy: A Biography, Baltimore, The John Hopkins University Press, 2008. - House of Representatives, (1869), Executive Documents, Printed by the Order of the House of Representatives during the Third Session of the Fortieth Congress, 1868-'69, Washington: Government Printing Office. - Houses of Parliament, (1857), Papers Relating to Proceedings of Her Majesty's Naval Forces at Canton, Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, London: Harrison & Sons. - Hunter, William C. (1885) Bits of Old China, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. - Hunter, William C. (1964) Journal of Occurrences at Canton. Hunter, William C. (pseudonym An Old Resident), The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton: Before Treaty Days 1825-1844, Shanghai: Oriental Affairs, 1882. immigrationships.net [internet]. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Great Britain), Proceedings, (1881 through 1890), and (1934). Jardines.com [internet]. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation [internet]. Jordan, John W. (Ed.) Surname Index to 'Colonial Families of Philadelphia', New York: Lewis Publishers, 1911. The Journal of Biological Chemistry [internet]. The Journal of Negro History, (renamed Journal of African American History in 2002), vol.32, no.1, January 1947, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc. Kim, Jaeyoon, 'The Heaven and Earth Society and the Red Turban Rebellion in Late Qing China', Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2009, vol. 3, no. 1. Lamas, Rosmarie W.N., Everything in Style, Harriett Low's Macau, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006. Langley, Harold, 'Gideon Nye and the Fromosa Annexation Scheme', The Pacific Historical Review, 1965, vol. 34, no. 4, November, pp.397-420. Le Pichon, Alain (Ed.) China Trade and Empire, Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong 1827-1843, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Lehigh University [internet]. LifeLegacy [internet]. Liu, Ta-jen, History of Sino-American Relations, 1784-1992, University Press of America, 1997. Lobingier, Charles Sumner (ed.) (1920) Extraterritorial Cases, vol. 1, Manila: Manila Bureau of Printing. The London Quarterly Review, April & July 1817, vol. 17, London: John Murray. MacAlpine, Mark (2006) Daniel Caldwell: Churchman, Freemason, Policeman … and Pirate Accomplice?, a lecture given at the meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, December 8, 2006. MayflowerHistory.com, Famous Descendants of Mayflower Passengers [internet]. McLane, Robert M. (2010) Reminiscences 1827-1897, Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing. McLeod, Stephen A. (ed.) (2011) Dining with the Washingtons. Middleton, Simon & Smith, Billy G. (Eds.) Class Matters, Early North America and the Atlantic World, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Moon, Robert C., The Morris Family of Philadelphia, Descendants of Anthony Morris (1654-1721), Philadelphia: Author, 1898. The Morning Herald, Baltimore, July 19, 1894. Morrison, Dane, Teaching the Old China Trade: A "Glocal" Approach in Early American Travelogues, World History Connected, Forum: Travel and Travel Accounts in World History, Part 2 [internet]. Munn, Christopher, Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841-1880, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001. Navy Marine Living History Association [internet]. New Jersey Marriage Records, 1666-1740 [internet]. The New York Times, July 7, 1884; March 4, 1888; February 18, 1894; January 20, 1904; March 22, 1908; October 1, 1922; December 29, 1990; January 12, 1997. Odrowaz-Sypniewska, Margaret The Bartholomew Family [internet]. The Online Tree Genealogy, Ships Passenger Lists , Abigail 1635 [internet]. open.ac.uk., Foreign Concessions: the Past and Future of a Form of Shared Sovereignty [internet]. The Boston Globe, July 8, 1987, Obituary, Pemberton Drinker, Was Engineer. Pope, Charles Henry, The Pioneers of Massachusetts, Boston: Author, 1900. The Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, October 30, 1934. Preble, George Henry & Szczesniak, Boleslaw, (Ed.) The Opening of Japan, A Diary of Discovery in the Far East, 1853-1856, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. Preserving American Freedom [internet]. Princeton Alumni Weekly [internet]. Rash's Surname Index [internet]. Riccards, Michael P., The Presidency and the Middle Kingdom: China, the United States, and the Executive Leadership, Lexington Books, 2000. Ride, Lindsay & Ride, May, An East India Company Cemetery: Protestant Burials in Macao, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1996. Rootsweb [internet]. The Rose Bud, or Youth's Gazette, Charleston, August 9, 1834. Rtree [internet]. Ruset, Ben, Atsion: Part 1 - The Charles Read Era; and Part 2: Prosperity and Decline, NJPrinceBarrens [internet]. Scully, Eileen P., Bargaining with the State from Afar, American Citizenship in Treaty Port China, 1844-1942, New York: Columbia University Press., 2001. Senate of the United States, The Executive Documents, Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States, 1858-'59, Washington: William A. Harris., 1859. Shavit, David, The United States in Asia, a Historical Dictionary, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press., 1990. Sinn, Elizabeth, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. Some Ships of the Clipper Ship Era: The Builders, Owners, and Captains, Boston: The State Street Trust Company. The Straits Times, March 22, 1853. The Sydney Mail, October 22, 1870. Tappert, Tara Leigh, Out of the Background: Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture, Arizona : Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., 2009. Torry, Clarence Almon, New England Marriages Prior to 1700, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1985. Tsai, Shih-Shan Henry, Maritime Taiwan, Historical Encounters with the East and the West, New York: M.E. Shape, Inc., 2009. University of Pennsylvania [internet]. University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, Foreign Relations of the United States [internet]. Vows Exchanged by Joan Gerrish, Cecil K. Drinker, The Lewiston Daily, December 4, 1967. Watkins, Lura Woodside, Early New England Potters and Their Wares, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. we relate [internet]. Whittemore, Henry, Genealogical Guide to the Early Settlers of America, New York, 1898. Who's Who in the Far East 1906-7, Hong Kong: China Mail. Wikisource [internet]. Woerner, Karen D., Merchants, Missionaries and American Policy Toward China: The Formation of the Open Door Policy, undergraduate honors thesis, Ball State University, 1993. Wong, J.Y., Yeh Ming-c'hen, Viceroy of Liang Kuang (1852-8), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Wood, Nathan E., The History of the First Baptist Church of Boston, Topeka, Kansas: Sola Scriptura Publishing, 2012. Xu, Guangqiu, American Doctors in Canton, Modernization in China, 1835-1935, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2011. 廣東文史館, 中山大學曆史系 (1992) 廣東洪兵起義史料 上冊,  廣東人民出版社. 廣州府志, 臺北: 成文出版社 (1966). 黄啟臣, 梁承鄴, 廣東十三行之一: 梁經國天寶行史迹, 廣州: 廣東高等教育出版社. 番禺縣續志, 臺北: 成文出版社 (1967). 清實錄 [internet]. 華林甫, 英國國家檔案館庋藏近代中文輿圖敘錄, 中國人民大學清史研究所. 中國評論學朮出版社 [internet].
Most of the books listed above are available for online reading at: book.google.com, eBooksRead.com, openlibrary.org, or archive.org.