It seems that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed “Wisdom”.

And then I know exactly what is going to follow: “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”  

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Chapter I

Origins

Fitch Family Ancestry

Our line of the Fitch family goes back to one William Fitch (also spelled at that time Fecche, Ficche, Fycche, Fiche, Fyche, Fytche and Fitche!) who was born about 1400 and lived in Wicken Bonhunt, Essex County in England. Interestingly the name may well have been derived from the word vetch, an important source of cattle fodder in those days. The patrimonial line then descended through William’s son John, to Thomas, who by marriage to Agnes Algore acquired Brazen Head Manor in Lindsell, Essex. They had eleven children – six sons and five daughters – all of who are depicted in a brass cover to their tomb in St. Mary’s chapel in Lindsell, shown here. The inscription reads, in translation:

Here lie Thomas Fytche and Agnes his wife which same Thomas died the twenty-first day of April in the year of our Lord 1514 on whose souls may God have mercy.

The acquisition of land from Agnes’ family seems to have put this line of Fitches on a firm foundation, and they used the wealth well to become prosperous over future generations.

After Thomas and Agnes, there came Roger, then George and his son Thomas who grew to be quite wealthy. Thomas married Anne Reve, and they lived in the town of Bocking near Lindsell.  They had eleven children, the third of who was James, our forebear, born on Christmas eve, 1622. Thomas died in England, but Anne survived him by some 37 years. She took three sons with her to Connecticut in 1650, whereas James had already gone there in 1638.

James’ brother Thomas’ son became Governor of Connecticut and was loyal to the English crown. His son Thomas was a revolutionary, and at the outset of the war for independence gathered up a ragtag group of men, stuck a feather in his cap, and rode off to Boston to join the fighting there. An observer, greatly amused by the sight of this bunch of ruffians, sat down and wrote new words to a popular barroom song. Thus was born “Yankee Doodle”!

James studied theology under the Reverend Thomas Hooker at Hartford, and took over a congregation at Saybrook, Connecticut. Later he relocated with a sizable number of his congregation to establish a new town, which they named Norwich, Connecticut.  Towards the end of his life, at the age of 79 he moved once again to Lebanon, Connecticut, a place

with great cedar trees that reminded him of the biblical cedars of Lebanon. He died the following year and is buried there. He was a fine leader and much loved by his ‘flock’.

James was obedient to God’s commandment to “be fruitful and multiply.” He had fifteen children by two wives (the first wife, Abigail Whitfield, died after eleven years of marriage and six children). The fifth son by Abigail was Samuel who married Mary Brewster, the great granddaughter of Elder William Brewster of Plymouth (thus we have a connection to the Mayflower, for what it’s worth). They lived in what was then called East Norwich. Their sixth child (of a mere 9) was Benjamin.

Ben married Hannah Read of Norwich, and they lived in East Norwich which was named at that time Long Society, and which today is called Preston. They had 6 children the fourth of whom was also named Benjamin, and who was our direct ancestor. He became Deacon of a new church established in Long Society. Father Benjamin died at the early age of 37 when son Ben was only 8 years old. The son married Zipporah Haskell of Norwich, and they begat eight children, the second of who was Joseph, our ancestor. Son Ben fought in a couple of battles of the French and Indian War in 1757. He was ‘Collector’ – or Treasurer – of the Long Society Congregational Church. And he apparently did well in land speculation, and left a substantial estate.

Joseph moved with his mother Zipporah to Pawlet, Vermont in 1776. He married his first cousin Mary Andrus. Joseph fought in the Revolutionary War during the year 1780. In more peaceful times he dealt in frequent land transactions like his father. Apparently he was well regarded; he served as a state legislator. Joseph and Mary had twelve children before they died, he, at 84 and she, at 76.

Their second son Ephraim married Sarah Porter, who died only four years later at the tender age of 21, having born three children. Ephraim married Rhoda Sears 7 years later, and they had 6 children. Ephraim was prosperous; he built a brick tavern and inn – now the Franklin House – as well as a gristmill. The latter was the cause of his accidental death when he was 45. Ephraim was, like his father, a legislator and a member of the church. Rhoda’s third son was named Ferris who was born in Pawlet in November, 1802.

Ferris Fitch was my great grandfather. He was a graduate of Middlebury College and of Andover Theological Seminary. Thus he renewed the service to Christian ministry started by James Fitch six generations earlier although as a Presbyterian. 1830 was a big year for Ferris: he graduated from seminary, got married to Sally Smith Griswold, and moved to Maine. There he was ordained a Congregational minister, and moved twice in Maine before emigrating to the Connecticut Western Reserve (now Ohio) in 1834. Ferris died in 1846 at the age of 44, but not before Sally bore him eight children, the youngest of whom was George Field Fitch, my grandfather, born in Avon, Ohio in 1845.

After mission work for 18 years, George was put in charge of the Presbyterian Mission Press in Shanghai, the largest publishing house in the Far East at that time. George and Mary had 5 children. My father, George Ashmore Fitch, was the fourth. The family lived on the top floor of the Mission Press building.

Shanghai grew during those years to become one of the greatest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The Fitch home hosted visiting missionaries from every denomination, Mary serving tea at 4:00 every afternoon. Mary home-schooled her five children in their early years, supervised two mission schools, cofounded the Door of Hope, a shelter for hundreds of young girls who had been sold into prostitution, and was editor of a quarterly entitled “Women’s Work in the Far East”. George and Mary McLellan Fitch were much loved by all, and when they died a church was built in Shanghai as their memorial. The Hongde Church, as it is now called, still stands and is active today.

All five children, after education in the United States, returned to China to do God’s work: Robert became President of Hangchow Christian College - now Zhejiang University Law School; Mary was a medical missionary; Jeanette married A.R. Kepler, one of the founders of the Church of Christ in China; and Alice worked with the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) there. George Ashmore attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, and then went on to Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University, where upon graduation he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister.

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Note:  All of the genealogy and biographies above are derived from my brother John’s monumental works entitled “A Fitch Family History. English Ancestors of the Fitches of Colonial Connecticut” (1990); “Puritan in the Wilderness, A Biography of the Reverend James Fitch, 1622 – 1702” (1993); and “Descendants of the Reverend James Fitch”, Vols. 1, 2 and 3 (1996, 1999 and 2002), Picton Press, Camden, Maine, USA.

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On a boat trip from Europe to America George had met a lovely young lady, Alberta Kempton, who was a student at Vassar College. They corresponded frequently thereafter, and upon graduation they decided to get married, even though he by then had determined to return to China with the International YMCA. They had four children, George Kempton, Marion, Albert and Edith, all born in China with the exception of Albert who arrived in the U.S.  Alberta tragically contracted typhoid fever and died in 1919. Some five years later my father met Geraldine Townsend who was working to establish Methodist youth groups throughout China. They became enamored and were married on the campus of her Alma Mater, Albion College, when both were on home-leave in 1924. ‘Gerry’, as everyone called her, bore two sons, John Townsend and Robert McLellan – me – both of us born in Shanghai.

In 1925 my father was asked to establish a ‘home away from home’ for young men and women coming to Shanghai from America, Europe and other countries and being involved in business, government and the professions. He made plans and raised the funds to build what became the Foreign YMCA in Shanghai. It turned out to be a beautiful 12-story ornate brick building with hotel rooms, library, seminar rooms, recreational and physical therapy facilities, swimming pool, barber shop, tailor shop, snack bar and dining room, and offices. It was one of the most outstanding edifices in the city, and is still standing when I visited Shanghai in 2017.

China was in turmoil in the early twentieth century. The democratic revolution of Dr. Sun Yat-sen (Sūn Rīxin) was being consolidated, but Shanghai was

largely taken over by foreigners. The Municipal Council comprised 6 British, 2 Americans and 1 Japanese. Chinese were allowed no representation! My father observed that, “The

ignorance of the average foreigner concerning the Chinese people ….is nothing short of appalling. Ignorance breeds distrust and fear….and instead of [creating] an atmosphere of friendliness and confidence, they [Chinese] are slighted, even insulted, in the foreign daily press. What could be better suited to drive them into the arms of the friendly Russian Reds?” [my emphasis]. What prescience to be able to foresee what would happen some 24 years later with the Communist takeover! *

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* These and many other fascinating aspects of my father’s life are told in his autobiography, “My Eighty Years in China”  2nd Ed., Mei Ya Publications, Taipei (1974).

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The Nationalist government of China, the Kuomintang, had moved to the ancient capitol, Nanking (Nanjing), from Peking (Beijing) in the mid 1930’s, and now in 1936 my father was asked to make the move as well. The family was smaller with just Mother, Father, brother John and me, but we enjoyed all the novelty of living in a ‘Chinese’ city. Our stay was short-lived since the Japanese had invaded China and were making their way to the Rape of Nanking. In 1937 Mother took John and me to America, but Dad stayed to witness the terrible holocaust that ensued. His eyes in the picture below reflect the horrendous atrocities they witnessed. His “Nanking Diary” is included in his autobiography, and describes his experiences as temporary Mayor of the city (the only foreigner in China ever to be so designated, at least up to that time) and director of the so-called Safety Zone therein during the Japanese occupation. Several movies have been made, and books written, of those terrible events.

Townsend Family History

Dear Reader, you no doubt have observed that this has been a patrilineal genealogy. This is an ancient tradition that I must respect. However, since my mother had a greater influence on me than did my father, I wish to tell you about her ancestry as well.

My mother’s father was Fred Townsend, a Methodist minister to several congregations in Michigan. He also served as a missionary to the Indians of the Northern Peninsula of Michigan. Fred was a ‘hellfire and brimstone’ preacher, who in his later years fulminated against sin of every kind. He could not enjoy reading a popular magazine, counting the ads for cigarettes and booze, expostulating with ever-reddening face upon the evils that threatened our lives at every turn.

Fred married Jenny Logan, a lovely young woman, quiet, devout, dutiful, and as caring a grandmother as a boy could ever desire. They had two sons and a daughter, my mother, Hazel Geraldine Townsend. She grew up in rural, small town southern Michigan in a deeply religious Christian environment. There was a special relationship between mother and daughter – loving, intelligent, and supportive, which I’m sure helped ‘Gerry’ to feel that she could achieve

whatever she set her mind to, and the courage ultimately to go to remote villages in China, where no white woman had ever been seen.             

Geraldine attended Albion College in Albion, Michigan; an excellent student, she was salutatorian of her graduating class. She embarked upon her intended career as an English teacher, but after only a few years her life was changed when the Methodist church asked her to go to China to set up youth organizations called the Epworth League as their National Secretary.

And thus it was that she met my father. They quickly fell in love, and were married soon thereafter in Albion. Dad was becoming a prominent citizen of Shanghai, and with four children by Alberta, Gerry was catapulted once again into a very different situation. Not only did she have the four children, ages of about 6 to 13, but also she would take on many social obligations. Subsequently she had two children of her own, John in 1926 and me in 1928. Fortunately for families in that social position, servants were available, and in fact a necessity: cook, amah, chauffeur, gardener, part-time tailor, No. 1 boy, No. 2 boy, and coolie. We moved to a lovely new house in the Hongjjao suburb of Shanghai. We were definitely climbing the social ladder, and Mother turned out to be good at this.

My father had visited the Communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai in 1940 when they had established a base in caves at Yenan. His purpose was to explore the possibilities of establishing a YMCA within the Communist enclave. He came away disappointed, with the realization that the Chinese could be, in his words, “strangled by this [atheistic], diabolical octopus”, and that to prevent this from happening “would be worth almost anything.”      

This was parallel to the experience of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who had gone to Moscow for military training because it was felt that the Chinese Republican revolution had much in common with the Bolshevik revolution. Chiang came back to China an ardent anti-Communist.

My mother was also caught up in this struggle and would campaign tirelessly for the cause of a Republican China.

When she took John and me to the United States in 1937 at the outbreak of war with Japan in China, she became more and more involved over the next several years with writing and lecturing across the country primarily against US sales of scrap metal and oil to Japan, and later, to opposing the Communist takeover of China. This meant putting John and me in boarding school for the years 1942 – 1944. We attended a small boys school near Lake Placid, New York with a total student body of 75 and an excellent faculty, Northwood School.

I appeared on the scene on the thirtieth of April, 1928 at the Country Hospital in Shanghai. I was born an American citizen under then-existing extraterritoriality rights. Several Western nations had extracted concessions of land within the city, which were colonial fiefdoms answerable solely to the home country. The French Concession, for example, had its own street names (we lived for a time on Avenue Petain), police, courts, architecture, shops etc.* There was also the International Settlement shared by Britain and the United States who had forced China to give up property and

rights such that U.S. citizens were subject to U.S. laws even though they were living in that distant land.

Some wag once said that you should choose your parents carefully. I guess I chose well. I feel deeply humbled and grateful that I have been heir to such a fortune of good, interesting, moral, ethical, brave, and intelligent people. I look around and see how rare is such an inheritance. In the chapters that follow, I relate how I was encouraged to pursue my own interests, and at the same time, made very conscious of my role in society; that there were obligations to living with others, family, friends and society at large. My mother made sure that I got into the best schools possible, that an education was absolutely important in getting a good start on whatever you pursue thereafter. After all, she was initially a teacher herself.                         

                

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* See also the beautiful photographs by Deke Erh with text by Tess Johnston in Frenchtown in Old Shanghai, Old China Hand Press, Hong Kong, 2000.

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