Description

Microfilm No. 51

The Rev. J. A. Wood (missionary with C.M.S.).

Lent by Mr. E. Wood and Mrs. I. Price.

Punjab: 1898-1920

Extract from the Rev. J. A. Wood’s memoir of the period 1898-1919, when a C.M.S. missionary in N. India (Batala, Lahore and Peshawar).

• Sails for Bombay October 1898. Lahore in the Divinity School, St. John’s College. Consecration of Bishop Lefroy – 1899. To Baring High School, Batala – students’ hostel built. 1900 – has riding accident and is out of action for a year.
• Helps in Elementary village mission schools.
• Marries in 1901 and returns to Batala to teach in the school. Accounts of various outstanding people in the Christian world in the Punjab, both Indian and British. Hill station of Thaniani. Return to Batala. Nonsectarian schools. Well digging. Daily life and yearly round in the school. 1905 Dharmsala earthquake. Visit of Prince and Princess of Wales to Amritsar. Incident and court case over Hindu woman who wished to become a Christian. Leave.
• Return to Lahore 1908, as Principal of Divinity School and Warden of Hostel for students in the Forman Christian College of American Presbyterian Mission. Rented house in hills at Kotgarh – accounts of various people there, and at Bishop Cotton School Lodge in Chota Simla and in Mussoorie: family life.
• Head of Divinity School and Warden of the Hostel at St. John’s College. Accounts of missionary methods, various students and staff. Mrs. Woods attacked and wounded. District Mission Councils set up in Punjab. Inauguration of three men to ‘Brotherhood of the Imitation’ – a group intending to live as Indian Sadhus. Account of their subsequent lives.
• Punjab Religious Book Society. Editorship of Punjab Mission News. Leave January 1913-1914.
• Peshawar 1914-19. Principal of Edwardes College. Sir George Roos Keppel Chief Commissioner of N.W.F.P. and deeply concerned with Islamia College. Officials and other Europeans in Peshawar. Description of Edwardes College: students and staff and the missionary activity. Other schools and colleges in the province.
• The dangers of life in the province. 1919 The Third Afghan War and the uprising in the Punjab. C.M.S. hospital staff, staffing of Peshawar hospital during the war. Wood’s own activities during the war. Account of the tension in the Punjab before General Dyer’s action at Amritsar, and Woods comments. Appointed a Fellow of the University of the Punjab, and Canon of Lahore Cathedral. Goes on leave. Description of voyage home on a packed troopship. 1920. Remains in England as Warden of Hostel for training men candidates for the Mission field.