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Formerly part of the independent Missionary Research Library (MRL), these records were accessioned by the Burke Library at the time of the MRL's closure in 1976.
Joseph Whiteside was born in Calhoun County, Alabama on September 18, 1868. He attended school in Piedmont, and in 1885 joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in White Plains. He studied at Oxford College in Oxford, Alabama, and taught school part time before receiving his A.B. degree in June 1891. After traveling and teaching at a village school that he helped to establish, Whiteside entered the Biblical department at Vanderbilt University, and was granted the B.D. degree in June 1898. He preached for several months in Montana, and sailed for China in August 1899 under the auspices of the American Southern Methodist Episcopal Mission, arriving in Shanghai on September 18. A few weeks later he moved to Suzhou 蘇州, 75 miles west of Shanghai, to begin his mission posting.
In 1905 Whiteside married Mary Van Schoonhoven, daughter of the Rev. Henry V. S. Myers, in Shanghai. Whiteside was a professor at Soochow University 東吳 大學 (then known as Teng Wu College 東吳大學堂), a school which had been established by Methodists in 1900. In 1902 he resigned to teach elsewhere in the Shanghai area, but at some point before 1914 he returned to the faculty of Soochow University, and taught there until his retirement. In 1914 he edited Li Ung B ing's Outlines of Chinese History, which was published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai. Whiteside left China in June 1929 and settled in Ohio with his wife and children. He passed away in Los Angeles on December 27, 1950.
Missionary Research Library Archives: MRL6, China
Item description, MRL6: Joseph Whiteside Diaries, series #, box #, and folder #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
The diaries were cataloged by Lynn A. Grove on 1988-07-21. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Pages with acidic content were interleaved with acid-free paper. Any fragile and loose inserts were removed and foldered separately. The finding aid was created by Gregory Adam Scott in 2010, reviewed and updated by Brigette C. Kamsler in 2011 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2020.
This collection consists of 31 diaries written by Whiteside during his thirty years in China. From 1899 to 1905 he used the series The Imperial English and Chinese Diary and Almanac (華英日記) by Kelly and Walsh, Limited. Many of these diaries contain newspaper clippings, correspondence, and other ephemera. After 1906 he used The Missionaries' Anglo-Chinese Diary, published by the American Presbyterian Mission Press in Shanghai. The diaries describe Whiteside's experiences living and working in China, and are often very personal in tone. They recount emotional experiences including episodes of illness, frustration related to his work, and his attempts to master the Chinese language.
Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Information concerning copyright, fair use, and reproduction requests can be consulted at Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office.
This collection is arranged in chronological order.