This collection is open for research.
Onsite storage.
This collection contains papers on medical mission work collected by Forman during his tenure at the Christian Medical Council. The bulk of the material deals with China, although some of the data is drawn from other mission fields, such as the Philippines, India, and Africa. The papers in folders 3 - 4 were produced as part of a report to the State Department on American medical mission institutions and staff in China following the outbreak of war with Japan. Folders 8 - 10 are mainly concerned with the planned establishment of a Hospital Service Agency in Shanghai to meet the needs of war-damaged mission hospitals in China.
Douglas Newton Forman papers, 1930 -- 1957
This series contains papers on medical mission work collected by Forman during his tenure at the Christian Medical Council. The bulk of the material deals with China, although some of the data is drawn from other mission fields, such as the Philippines, India, and Africa. The papers in folders 3 - 4 were produced as part of a report to the State Department on American medical mission institutions and staff in China following the outbreak of war with Japan. Folders 8 - 10 are mainly concerned with the planned establishment of a Hospital Service Agency in Shanghai to meet the needs of war-damaged mission hospitals in China.
Missionary Research Library Archives: MRL6, China
This collection is organized in one series that is arranged thematically.
This collection is open for research.
Onsite storage.
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.
Item description, MRL 6: Douglas Newton Forman papers, 1930-1949, box #, folder #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Forman Family Papers (RG 110), Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library.
These records were donated to the independent Missionary Research Library (MRL) by Douglas Newton Forman some time before his death in 1961, and were accessioned by the Burke Library at the time of the MRL's closure in 1976.
Columbia University Libraries, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary
Metal clips and staples were removed from materials and folded items were flattened. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Acidic items were separated from one another by interleaving with acid-free paper as needed. Especially degraded material was photocopied on to acid-free paper. The folders which were assembled by Forman did not appear to follow a chronological or strictly thematic order, but were divided into seven bulky folders with the original folder headings and new folder order as follows:
Original Folder Heading New Folder Number(s) China - Miscellaneous Hospitals and Universities 1 Harvard-Yenching Institute 2 Medical Work in China for State Department 3 - 4 China - Miscellaneous - Clippings and Medical 5 - 6 China Hospitals Statistical Report 7 China Hospitals - Equipment and Supplies 8 - 10 Hospitals in Mission Areas 11 - 12
In 2014, the collection and finding aid were updated as part of the Henry Luce Foundation grant. Unprocessed material was integrated at this time and is in box 2. The original finding aid was created by Gregory Adam Scott in 2010, updated by Brigette Kamsler in 2014 as part of the Henry Luce Foundation grant, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2024.
2024-02-22 PDF converted to EAD and description updated by Leah Edelman.
Douglas Newton Forman was born on March 22, 1890 in Jalandhar in the north of India to a missionary family. His father Charles W. Forman was a medical missionary in India for forty-three years, and his grandfather C.W. Forman founded the Forman Christian College in Lahore, now part of Pakistan. Douglas Forman graduated from Wooster College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. He married Amy Gilson March, daughter of missionaries to Syria, in 1915 before serving in the United States Army Medical Corp from 1917 to 1919. After that he and his wife lived in India as medical missionaries under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. until 1939 when they returned to the United States. In 1943 Forman began working under Edward Hicks Hume, the director of the Christian Medical Council for Overseas Work (CMC), and three years later took over from Hume as executive secretary. The council had been founded in 1938 by Hume, was located in New York City and was a division of the National Council of Churches and a representative committee of the Foreign Missions Conference of North America. Allen O. Whipple, professor of medicine at Columbia University from 1921 to 1946, was chairman of the council. Forman retired from the CMC in 1960, and he died on September 25, 1961 after a long illness. He was survived by his widow and six children, including the American diplomat Douglas Forman Jr.
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
All links open new windows.
| Name | ||
|---|---|---|
| Forman, Douglas Newton, 1890-1961 -- : Archives | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |
| Subject | ||
| Missions, Medical -- China | CLIO Catalog | ArchiveGRID |