FRED'S STORY: ~THE STORY~---related-pages---site navigation
A brief and incomplete biography of Fred
Fred is such an interesting character. Of course all five siblings were all interesting, but Fred - oh my, a missionary to darkest Africa who was fired because he was deficient in missionary zeal? Yes, I know. Africa isn't dark. Details, details. And the firing wasn't all that simple. More details. If you want them, read on. But here's a picture of him first, taken in the late 1930s:
Growing up
Fred was the third of the five Stokey siblings. He was born on August 5, 1879. Please note that he was Fred, not Frederick. There apparently was a fashion at the time for giving your baby the name that you would actually be using for him.
Here he is, around 1886, on the left, with Will on the right.
Here he is, around 1886, on the left, with Will on the right.
This was part of a set of photographs of Fred and his four siblings, taken by a professional photographer in Canton. Forty years later he sent the picture to his fiancée, saying:
It is my earliest photo and in it I looked like a prizefighter. Will looks much more peaceable.
Both Fred and his older brother Will were interested in photography, so I like to imagine them looking around the photographer’s studio while the pictures of their sisters were being taken. And as I messed around on the computer with the scanned photographs, I thought of how much fun Fred would have had with the software for photographs that we have now.
But also, according to Fred, the childhood photographs were taken to give to a teacher who was becoming a missionary. Those pictures would have been taken overseas to - where? China? I need to check and see if Fred mentioned that. But anyway, this would have put the idea of being a missionary into Fred’s mind as a real possibility. A way to see the world while doing good as well.
There were other ways of seeing the world - on a bicycle, for example. In 1897, Will was at West Point, so Fred rode across New York to see him. I've written more about that in a separate page:
FRED'S BICYCLE ACCIDENT
One could also see the world in military service. Fred joined the US Army briefly during the Spanish American War, enrolling in the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the spring of 1898. The story I have is that Fred lied about his age to get in. He had turned 18 in August of 1897, and that seemed old enough to me. But I found out more about minimum age on a US Militia forum, in which there was a response to an question about a thirteen-year-old who enlisted in a West Virginia infantry unit:
It was lowered from 21 to 18 when the war started. He enlisted in a state unit so they would have screened him. Physicians checked soldiers out during the process and it is said they would know a recruit's likely age. The fact that so many teenagers under 18 made it into service shows a lot of winks nods and turned heads were going on along the chain.
War was declared on April 25, 1898, and Eva noted in a letter written on June 5 that Fred had been gone for 39 days, which means his regiment left on April 27. So apparently Fred joined up before the lowering of the minimum age went into effect.
In any case, the regiment was shipped to Cuba, arriving in Havana harbor on July 10. Fred never set foot on Cuban soil, and on August 26 the regiment arrived back in the US. They were mustered out of service on November 21 in Wooster, Ohio, and the only long-term effect that the experience had on Fred was a lifelong hatred of canned tomatoes. I found a first-hand description online of the canned tomatoes that were fed to the US troops in the Spanish American War:
stale, sometimes spoiled, sickening at best.
It seems likely that it was at this time that Fred acquired his lack of enthusiasm for processed meat as well. Here’s something from the same paragraph as the description of the canned tomatoes:
A regular artilleryman on another ship was no less condemning of the canned meat. Even though it was slimy and smelled terrible he forced himself to eat it, but became violently sick after only three mouthfuls. He decided to save an unopened can as a souvenir, but when he accidentally dropped it on the deck of the ship it exploded and showered him with its filthy contents.
Back at home, Fred’s father was becoming increasingly difficult. We have some harrowing details from the divorce petition that his mother, Mama Margaret filed in 1900. The detail that concerns Fred said:
That at the time their son Frederick was about to leave as a soldier to Cuba, he undertook to compel her to make a confession before their son left for the war, that she was to blame for all disputes and all trouble that had ever existed in the family; that she was the cause of all their misfortunes and bad luck, etc.
The petition also says that Papa Charles was not supporting Mama Margaret financially. Will and Fred helped out with that. Fred worked in a watchmaking factory in Canton - the Dueber Watch Company - after his stint in the Army. (I checked with AG. she had no memory of the name of the company, but the 1903 Canton city directory shows Fred working at Dueber.)
Although the family story was that nobody had anything to do with Papa Charles after the divorce, contact was maintained while the family was still in Canton. In August 1903, Mama Margaret wrote to Will (who, having graduated from West Point in 1900, was currently stationed in the Philippines):
Papa is going to give some kind of a lecture at the Institute the last of the month. He has been trying to make something to make an experiment with. Fred is over there to-night helping him with it. He has made use of one of your big knitting needles.
I think the family worried a bit about Fred, working in the watch factory. Granted, he had a skilled job, but he was not furthering his education. But in December 1903 Alma wrote to Will (still in the Philippines):
I can see a great improvement in Fred since last summer. He is getting over that crazy fanaticism and acts like himself. He is lots of fun now. He takes an interest in everything now. Eva is giving him piano lessons and he is talking of taking vocal lessons from Mr. Brown. He is beginning to study again. I asked Mama what made him so different and she said there was an Evangelist named Smith who got at him and took some of his crazy notions out of him. I am very glad of it. It is so much more fun to come home.
Note: I think Mama Margaret was always willing to attribute good personal outcomes to religion. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t.
It is my earliest photo and in it I looked like a prizefighter. Will looks much more peaceable.
Both Fred and his older brother Will were interested in photography, so I like to imagine them looking around the photographer’s studio while the pictures of their sisters were being taken. And as I messed around on the computer with the scanned photographs, I thought of how much fun Fred would have had with the software for photographs that we have now.
But also, according to Fred, the childhood photographs were taken to give to a teacher who was becoming a missionary. Those pictures would have been taken overseas to - where? China? I need to check and see if Fred mentioned that. But anyway, this would have put the idea of being a missionary into Fred’s mind as a real possibility. A way to see the world while doing good as well.
There were other ways of seeing the world - on a bicycle, for example. In 1897, Will was at West Point, so Fred rode across New York to see him. I've written more about that in a separate page:
FRED'S BICYCLE ACCIDENT
One could also see the world in military service. Fred joined the US Army briefly during the Spanish American War, enrolling in the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the spring of 1898. The story I have is that Fred lied about his age to get in. He had turned 18 in August of 1897, and that seemed old enough to me. But I found out more about minimum age on a US Militia forum, in which there was a response to an question about a thirteen-year-old who enlisted in a West Virginia infantry unit:
It was lowered from 21 to 18 when the war started. He enlisted in a state unit so they would have screened him. Physicians checked soldiers out during the process and it is said they would know a recruit's likely age. The fact that so many teenagers under 18 made it into service shows a lot of winks nods and turned heads were going on along the chain.
War was declared on April 25, 1898, and Eva noted in a letter written on June 5 that Fred had been gone for 39 days, which means his regiment left on April 27. So apparently Fred joined up before the lowering of the minimum age went into effect.
In any case, the regiment was shipped to Cuba, arriving in Havana harbor on July 10. Fred never set foot on Cuban soil, and on August 26 the regiment arrived back in the US. They were mustered out of service on November 21 in Wooster, Ohio, and the only long-term effect that the experience had on Fred was a lifelong hatred of canned tomatoes. I found a first-hand description online of the canned tomatoes that were fed to the US troops in the Spanish American War:
stale, sometimes spoiled, sickening at best.
It seems likely that it was at this time that Fred acquired his lack of enthusiasm for processed meat as well. Here’s something from the same paragraph as the description of the canned tomatoes:
A regular artilleryman on another ship was no less condemning of the canned meat. Even though it was slimy and smelled terrible he forced himself to eat it, but became violently sick after only three mouthfuls. He decided to save an unopened can as a souvenir, but when he accidentally dropped it on the deck of the ship it exploded and showered him with its filthy contents.
Back at home, Fred’s father was becoming increasingly difficult. We have some harrowing details from the divorce petition that his mother, Mama Margaret filed in 1900. The detail that concerns Fred said:
That at the time their son Frederick was about to leave as a soldier to Cuba, he undertook to compel her to make a confession before their son left for the war, that she was to blame for all disputes and all trouble that had ever existed in the family; that she was the cause of all their misfortunes and bad luck, etc.
The petition also says that Papa Charles was not supporting Mama Margaret financially. Will and Fred helped out with that. Fred worked in a watchmaking factory in Canton - the Dueber Watch Company - after his stint in the Army. (I checked with AG. she had no memory of the name of the company, but the 1903 Canton city directory shows Fred working at Dueber.)
Although the family story was that nobody had anything to do with Papa Charles after the divorce, contact was maintained while the family was still in Canton. In August 1903, Mama Margaret wrote to Will (who, having graduated from West Point in 1900, was currently stationed in the Philippines):
Papa is going to give some kind of a lecture at the Institute the last of the month. He has been trying to make something to make an experiment with. Fred is over there to-night helping him with it. He has made use of one of your big knitting needles.
I think the family worried a bit about Fred, working in the watch factory. Granted, he had a skilled job, but he was not furthering his education. But in December 1903 Alma wrote to Will (still in the Philippines):
I can see a great improvement in Fred since last summer. He is getting over that crazy fanaticism and acts like himself. He is lots of fun now. He takes an interest in everything now. Eva is giving him piano lessons and he is talking of taking vocal lessons from Mr. Brown. He is beginning to study again. I asked Mama what made him so different and she said there was an Evangelist named Smith who got at him and took some of his crazy notions out of him. I am very glad of it. It is so much more fun to come home.
Note: I think Mama Margaret was always willing to attribute good personal outcomes to religion. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t.
The first missionary stint
Fred started at Oberlin College in 1904, the year that the family left Papa Charles behind in Canton and moved to Oberlin. It was at Oberlin that Fred met Mabel Woodside. Mabel had spent a good deal of her childhood in Africa, as the child of missionary parents, working for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and she was planning to become a missionary herself. I figure that Fred was thinking about being a missionary, and that in the course of checking out the possibilities he met Mabel, and falling in love with Mabel made him definitely want to be a missionary with her. Fred didn’t have the whole “Let’s civilize the heathens” attitude quite down, but he went to medical school and applied to become a medical missionary with a very carefully written doctrinal statement. Here it is, typewritten so there are no handwriting revelations, but I like the original anyway. I have included a transcription of it below the picture of it:
The document appears to be answers to a series of questions. There was probably a standard set of questions, but I couldn’t find them questions online, so I’ve written what they seem to be (though no doubt the questions were more elegantly expressed), and added them in:
DOCTRINAL STATEMENT
(a) I believe the Christian life to consist in the realization in one’s personal experience, according to his ability, of the religious experience enjoyed by Jesus Christ and the working out of this experience in a life of service to humanity. The origin of this life is the impregnation of the mind by the Holy Spitit [sic], making him a new creature conscious of a new (mystical) environment from which he begins to draw inspiration and strength. The beginning of this new consciousness is either sudden or more or less gradual. With it is a recognition of the lordship of Jesus.
My aim as a missionary will be to make the Spirit of Christ the dominating influence in the lives of men. I believe this aim to be defeated by a ministry that overemphasizes the material advantages of Christian civilization. Ministering to the physical needs of the sick is not in itself any more missionary work than ministering to the physical wants of the well. I would be unwilling to permit a division of labor whereby I should treat the body while a native evangelist harangued the waiting line of patients. My interest is personal and not merely professional.
(b) I accept in general the confession of faith of the Congregational Church. The appeal of Jesus to the conscience and faith of men is irresistible. He needs introduction and not defense or apology.
I regard the Bible as the literary masterpiece of the most gifted and most spiritual race. The portions that are historical are to be interpreted in the light of history, the scientific observations according to our knowledge science [sic], the doctrinal by its appeal to our reason, the poetical by its esthetical appeal, and the mystical by its appeal to our mysticism, its ethics by its appeal to our conscience. It furnishes us a standard for comparison of our religious experience with those of the prophets and early disciples of Christ.
(c) I hold no views that would prevent cordial cooperation with the missionaries of this Board. I hold my views as personal property satisfying the demands of my own reason and experience and of no value or use to anyone else. No man can formulate a creed that will entirely meet the requirements of another.
(d) I consider the non-Christian religions inadequate or detrimental to the highest development of character.
(e) I believe in the Congregational form of church government.
(f) I desire to serve as a foreign missionary because it offers the best opportunity for the full expression of the Christian faith in one of my particular temperament and talents.
(g) I regard hardship, suffering and peril as necessary to the full development of Christian character. Vicarious suffering is one of the characteristics of the Christian experience. “None of these things move me.”
(h) It is my desire to live and to die in Africa.
(i) I believe that the Golden Rule is applicable to missionaries. I shall give my associates credit for the same conscienciousness [sic] that I hope to receive from them.
(j) I can see no reason why I should not work cheerfully and happily under the American Board.
This was submitted to the A.B.C.F.M. as a candidate for commissioning in 1912. Fred Eicher Stokey
The statement is worth reading all the way through. It is a memorable combination of idealism - “My aim as a missionary will be to make the Spirit of Christ the dominating influence in the lives of men.” - and commitment - “It is my desire to live and to die in Africa.” - as well as caution - “I hold no views that would prevent cordial cooperation with the missionaries of this Board.”
The application was accepted. Fred did the necessary time in Portugal learning Portuguese, because Angola was owned by Portugal at the time, and then he went to Angola, married Mabel, and rode around Angola on a motorcycle. He had a kitten that he carried around with him. He would put the kitten into his jacket and zip it up, and ride a while...and then the kitten would crawl down into the sleeve of the jacket and he would stop and reposition it so he could continue.
DOCTRINAL STATEMENT
(a) I believe the Christian life to consist in the realization in one’s personal experience, according to his ability, of the religious experience enjoyed by Jesus Christ and the working out of this experience in a life of service to humanity. The origin of this life is the impregnation of the mind by the Holy Spitit [sic], making him a new creature conscious of a new (mystical) environment from which he begins to draw inspiration and strength. The beginning of this new consciousness is either sudden or more or less gradual. With it is a recognition of the lordship of Jesus.
My aim as a missionary will be to make the Spirit of Christ the dominating influence in the lives of men. I believe this aim to be defeated by a ministry that overemphasizes the material advantages of Christian civilization. Ministering to the physical needs of the sick is not in itself any more missionary work than ministering to the physical wants of the well. I would be unwilling to permit a division of labor whereby I should treat the body while a native evangelist harangued the waiting line of patients. My interest is personal and not merely professional.
(b) I accept in general the confession of faith of the Congregational Church. The appeal of Jesus to the conscience and faith of men is irresistible. He needs introduction and not defense or apology.
I regard the Bible as the literary masterpiece of the most gifted and most spiritual race. The portions that are historical are to be interpreted in the light of history, the scientific observations according to our knowledge science [sic], the doctrinal by its appeal to our reason, the poetical by its esthetical appeal, and the mystical by its appeal to our mysticism, its ethics by its appeal to our conscience. It furnishes us a standard for comparison of our religious experience with those of the prophets and early disciples of Christ.
(c) I hold no views that would prevent cordial cooperation with the missionaries of this Board. I hold my views as personal property satisfying the demands of my own reason and experience and of no value or use to anyone else. No man can formulate a creed that will entirely meet the requirements of another.
(d) I consider the non-Christian religions inadequate or detrimental to the highest development of character.
(e) I believe in the Congregational form of church government.
(f) I desire to serve as a foreign missionary because it offers the best opportunity for the full expression of the Christian faith in one of my particular temperament and talents.
(g) I regard hardship, suffering and peril as necessary to the full development of Christian character. Vicarious suffering is one of the characteristics of the Christian experience. “None of these things move me.”
(h) It is my desire to live and to die in Africa.
(i) I believe that the Golden Rule is applicable to missionaries. I shall give my associates credit for the same conscienciousness [sic] that I hope to receive from them.
(j) I can see no reason why I should not work cheerfully and happily under the American Board.
This was submitted to the A.B.C.F.M. as a candidate for commissioning in 1912. Fred Eicher Stokey
The statement is worth reading all the way through. It is a memorable combination of idealism - “My aim as a missionary will be to make the Spirit of Christ the dominating influence in the lives of men.” - and commitment - “It is my desire to live and to die in Africa.” - as well as caution - “I hold no views that would prevent cordial cooperation with the missionaries of this Board.”
The application was accepted. Fred did the necessary time in Portugal learning Portuguese, because Angola was owned by Portugal at the time, and then he went to Angola, married Mabel, and rode around Angola on a motorcycle. He had a kitten that he carried around with him. He would put the kitten into his jacket and zip it up, and ride a while...and then the kitten would crawl down into the sleeve of the jacket and he would stop and reposition it so he could continue.
Between missionary stints: Living in Massachusetts, before and after Mabel's death
Alas, Mabel got tuberculosis. I think she must have had it even on her wedding day; years later her mother said in a letter to Fred:
Poor, dear Mabel was too ill take care of the home she so longed for.
Mabel and her mother returned to the US in 1914, and Fred followed in 1915. Fred and Mabel lived with Mabel’s mother in Massachusetts near Alma, because Fred and Alma were particularly close. Fred found a job nearby, and for a couple of years Mabel’s disease seemed fairly stable. They had a cat - no surprise. Mabel wrote to Fred’s little niece Margaret:
I wish you could see my grey kitten. It is such a funny kitty for it likes to eat peanuts.
Mabel died on May 6, 1917, rather suddenly, it seems. The family all supported Fred in his grief. He went out to Ohio, first visiting Laura, the middle Stokey sister, in Canton, and then going to Cincinnati, where Will and his Kathleen were living with their two very young children Margaret and Billy, and where Will’s and Fred’s mother, Mama Margaret, was visiting as well. Fred stayed there for four days, and the family kept him busy playing with little Margaret, seeing Will’s office, repairing toys, doing photography with Will, and going for rides in Will’s Buick.
They were not a family that talked much about their feelings, as far as I can tell. So there were probably no deep and interesting conversations between recently widowed Fred, and Will whose first wife Margaret had died in 1912, and Mama Margaret who had divorced her abusive husband in 1900. But Mama Margaret reported to Eva that Fred was quite broken up over Mabel’s death, and Mama Margaret had been quite fond of Mabel, so there surely was some sort of conversation between Mama Margaret and Fred.
And then Fred went back to Massachusetts, where Alma kept an eye on him, writing to Eva, who was vacationing in New Jersey:.
I wish that I could go to Cape May but I think that I had better wait until some other time. I am poor for one thing and for another I want to be with Fred.
At some point he had gotten a job at the Boston Homeopathic Hospital. He wasn't a homeopathic doctor, but the Homeopathic Hospital was less and less homeopathic, so it was OK. He was thoroughly overworked during the 1918 flu epidemic, but other than that I don't have much about him during these years.
Poor, dear Mabel was too ill take care of the home she so longed for.
Mabel and her mother returned to the US in 1914, and Fred followed in 1915. Fred and Mabel lived with Mabel’s mother in Massachusetts near Alma, because Fred and Alma were particularly close. Fred found a job nearby, and for a couple of years Mabel’s disease seemed fairly stable. They had a cat - no surprise. Mabel wrote to Fred’s little niece Margaret:
I wish you could see my grey kitten. It is such a funny kitty for it likes to eat peanuts.
Mabel died on May 6, 1917, rather suddenly, it seems. The family all supported Fred in his grief. He went out to Ohio, first visiting Laura, the middle Stokey sister, in Canton, and then going to Cincinnati, where Will and his Kathleen were living with their two very young children Margaret and Billy, and where Will’s and Fred’s mother, Mama Margaret, was visiting as well. Fred stayed there for four days, and the family kept him busy playing with little Margaret, seeing Will’s office, repairing toys, doing photography with Will, and going for rides in Will’s Buick.
They were not a family that talked much about their feelings, as far as I can tell. So there were probably no deep and interesting conversations between recently widowed Fred, and Will whose first wife Margaret had died in 1912, and Mama Margaret who had divorced her abusive husband in 1900. But Mama Margaret reported to Eva that Fred was quite broken up over Mabel’s death, and Mama Margaret had been quite fond of Mabel, so there surely was some sort of conversation between Mama Margaret and Fred.
And then Fred went back to Massachusetts, where Alma kept an eye on him, writing to Eva, who was vacationing in New Jersey:.
I wish that I could go to Cape May but I think that I had better wait until some other time. I am poor for one thing and for another I want to be with Fred.
At some point he had gotten a job at the Boston Homeopathic Hospital. He wasn't a homeopathic doctor, but the Homeopathic Hospital was less and less homeopathic, so it was OK. He was thoroughly overworked during the 1918 flu epidemic, but other than that I don't have much about him during these years.
Back to Africa
In 1922, Fred applied to go back to Angola as a medical missionary, and was accepted. The acceptance letter was sent to him in Orlando, Florida. Florida was where Mabel’s parents had retired to. Fred was staying with them, but I don’t know exactly how - if at all - they were instrumental in getting him back to Africa.
And so Fred went back to where he had been before. The cat who had ridden inside his jacket before was still alive, mostly living wild, not interested in people. But when Fred called for the cat, it came to him. He had been gone for seven years, but the cat still remembered him.
Fred’s mother died in May of 1924, while he was far away. That crystallized May in his mind as a sad month: the month when Mabel died, the month when his mother died.
This time in Angola, the United States and Canadian missions were somehow intertwined. I haven’t figured out the details. But due to this, Fred met a certain Canadian missionary nurse, Sibyl Hosking. She was nearly 20 years younger than he, but she reminded of his mother. Here are side-by-photos of Mama Margaret in 1913 with her first grandchild and Sibyl in 1927 with children at the Mission:
And so Fred went back to where he had been before. The cat who had ridden inside his jacket before was still alive, mostly living wild, not interested in people. But when Fred called for the cat, it came to him. He had been gone for seven years, but the cat still remembered him.
Fred’s mother died in May of 1924, while he was far away. That crystallized May in his mind as a sad month: the month when Mabel died, the month when his mother died.
This time in Angola, the United States and Canadian missions were somehow intertwined. I haven’t figured out the details. But due to this, Fred met a certain Canadian missionary nurse, Sibyl Hosking. She was nearly 20 years younger than he, but she reminded of his mother. Here are side-by-photos of Mama Margaret in 1913 with her first grandchild and Sibyl in 1927 with children at the Mission:
Fred and Sibyl became engaged in the summer of 1927. They planned a December wedding, and wrote in July to inform the Missionary Boards in the US and in Canada. Fred and Sibyl were assigned to different stations in Angola - Fred in Dondi and Sibyl in Chissamba, several hundred miles away - so that there would need to be reassignments of some sort when they were married. This was nothing unusual; at this same time two other missionaries in two different Angola stations were married without any problem.
Mail to and from America was slow. There was no air mail, and transportation between the mission stations and the coast could be slow as well. So it wasn’t until October, three months later, that a response was received to the letters. And It was not encouraging. There was a problem with transferring Sibyl from Chissamba to Dondi, because at the time Sibyl was the only medical staff at Chissamba. There had been a doctor, but he left, and now they were waiting for a new doctor. And so, the General Secretary of the Woman’s Board, Miss Jamieson, wrote Sibyl:
You will learn from Mrs. Gunn’s letter that the Board requests you to remain at your posts until the reinforcements arrive in the person of Dr. Strangways and his wife. We cannot but feel that the medical work at Chissamba is too important just to be closed up, and that even at the sacrifice of a little personal happiness, the work must be the first consideration. When this matter was before the Board, I said quite frankly that I felt sure the Board had only to make this request to have your ready acquiescence. We know so well your spirit of devotion and acquiescence that we feel sure once you realized the need that you would be more than willing to fall in line.
I include the whole paragraph because it annoys me so much - inflicting such a guilt trip on Sibyl.
But that was not all. Miss Jamieson also wrote:
The fact of the matter is, Dr. Stokey has not proven a satisfactory missionary to the Canadian Church, and its Mission Board. It is not necessary for me to go into the matter fully, because the question is entirely between Dr. Stokey and the Foreign Mission Board, but I am willing to say this, that if he had been serving a business concern instead of a Christian Board, he would have been recalled long since and discharged.
This appears to have been the first time Fred learned that there was an issue with his status as a missionary, and he learned of it through a letter to Sibyl, which would not have been written if Sibyl hadn’t written to announce her engagement to him.
Fred wrote to Miss Jamieson, assuming that there must have been some complaint from his colleagues that he hadn’t heard about. More time passed, and eventually her response, dated January 16, 1928, came to Fred. No, it wasn’t that his colleagues had complained:
As a matter of fact, as I think the matter through, I realize how little your colleagues have ever said, and the fact that the trouble does not lie with the people in the Field is evidenced by the fact which you point out, that your colleagues voted for your return.
And then Miss Jamieson said:
In going through matter in my own mind, and I have not discussed it with anyone else, I see that the whole trouble lies deeper than appears on the surface. It is a matter of spirit rather than of actions, and I am reminded of our Lord's words, “Ye would not come unto me that you might have life.” It is these first three words “Ye would not” to which I direct your attention. Let us go back to the day the Executive met in Bond St. Church, Toronto, and accepted you as its missionary to Angola. I recall the late Dr. Warriner, who was the soul of love, asking you about joining a Canadian Church and saying something like this: “We want you to come right in and be one of us, Dr. Stokey. It is not that we have a narrow nationalism, but if you are to be our missionary, we want you right in our fellowship”, but “ye would not.”
The story in the family is that Fred was fired as a missionary because he wasn’t religious enough. The letters I have read indicate that that wasn’t the whole story, but I think that his approach to Christianity may have irritated them, and perhaps he felt that if it had not irritated them, then they might have been more forgiving in other areas. Fred seems to have been quite interested in Jesus’s humanity, whereas your average missionary seems to have been more interested in Jesus’s divinity.
Fred and Sibyl maintained hope that the issues could be worked out, but it proved to be impossible.
They were married in 1928 in Angola. Fred wrote to Alma:
Kathleen can put in the society column of the Fernbank News that Mr. Uncle Fred and Miss Sibyl Hosking were married on May 30 at Vila Silva Porto and Chissamba. At V.S.P. we signed the civil register and returned to Chissamba for a church wedding. The service was in Umbundu. So she must obey when I speak to her in Umbundu.
We were to have been at the Administrar at 9 a.m. but were late. Mr. Steed borrowed a “Dodge” to take us there and broke a front spring on the way. Then he was still later getting away from V.S.P. so that we did not sit down to the wedding breakfast until after 3 o’clock.
AG says that the ceremony also incorporated some native customs.
Fred also reported to Alma on the honeymoon, which was one that their still unborn grandchildren would have enjoyed:
The whole series of delays made us late getting to Dondi so we spent the night here. In the morning we went to Mt. Elumbanganda, near Bailundo.
We had our tent pitched near the foot and next morning climbed to our camp on the top, about 400 meters higher. From the top we could see the Chileso Mountains, 75 miles away, Huambo could be seen about 50 miles in the other direction. There was a good mountain stream for our water supply.
We were in camp six days and then returned to Chissamba on the Thursday train.
Then they went back to America, by way of Capetown and London.
Mail to and from America was slow. There was no air mail, and transportation between the mission stations and the coast could be slow as well. So it wasn’t until October, three months later, that a response was received to the letters. And It was not encouraging. There was a problem with transferring Sibyl from Chissamba to Dondi, because at the time Sibyl was the only medical staff at Chissamba. There had been a doctor, but he left, and now they were waiting for a new doctor. And so, the General Secretary of the Woman’s Board, Miss Jamieson, wrote Sibyl:
You will learn from Mrs. Gunn’s letter that the Board requests you to remain at your posts until the reinforcements arrive in the person of Dr. Strangways and his wife. We cannot but feel that the medical work at Chissamba is too important just to be closed up, and that even at the sacrifice of a little personal happiness, the work must be the first consideration. When this matter was before the Board, I said quite frankly that I felt sure the Board had only to make this request to have your ready acquiescence. We know so well your spirit of devotion and acquiescence that we feel sure once you realized the need that you would be more than willing to fall in line.
I include the whole paragraph because it annoys me so much - inflicting such a guilt trip on Sibyl.
But that was not all. Miss Jamieson also wrote:
The fact of the matter is, Dr. Stokey has not proven a satisfactory missionary to the Canadian Church, and its Mission Board. It is not necessary for me to go into the matter fully, because the question is entirely between Dr. Stokey and the Foreign Mission Board, but I am willing to say this, that if he had been serving a business concern instead of a Christian Board, he would have been recalled long since and discharged.
This appears to have been the first time Fred learned that there was an issue with his status as a missionary, and he learned of it through a letter to Sibyl, which would not have been written if Sibyl hadn’t written to announce her engagement to him.
Fred wrote to Miss Jamieson, assuming that there must have been some complaint from his colleagues that he hadn’t heard about. More time passed, and eventually her response, dated January 16, 1928, came to Fred. No, it wasn’t that his colleagues had complained:
As a matter of fact, as I think the matter through, I realize how little your colleagues have ever said, and the fact that the trouble does not lie with the people in the Field is evidenced by the fact which you point out, that your colleagues voted for your return.
And then Miss Jamieson said:
In going through matter in my own mind, and I have not discussed it with anyone else, I see that the whole trouble lies deeper than appears on the surface. It is a matter of spirit rather than of actions, and I am reminded of our Lord's words, “Ye would not come unto me that you might have life.” It is these first three words “Ye would not” to which I direct your attention. Let us go back to the day the Executive met in Bond St. Church, Toronto, and accepted you as its missionary to Angola. I recall the late Dr. Warriner, who was the soul of love, asking you about joining a Canadian Church and saying something like this: “We want you to come right in and be one of us, Dr. Stokey. It is not that we have a narrow nationalism, but if you are to be our missionary, we want you right in our fellowship”, but “ye would not.”
The story in the family is that Fred was fired as a missionary because he wasn’t religious enough. The letters I have read indicate that that wasn’t the whole story, but I think that his approach to Christianity may have irritated them, and perhaps he felt that if it had not irritated them, then they might have been more forgiving in other areas. Fred seems to have been quite interested in Jesus’s humanity, whereas your average missionary seems to have been more interested in Jesus’s divinity.
Fred and Sibyl maintained hope that the issues could be worked out, but it proved to be impossible.
They were married in 1928 in Angola. Fred wrote to Alma:
Kathleen can put in the society column of the Fernbank News that Mr. Uncle Fred and Miss Sibyl Hosking were married on May 30 at Vila Silva Porto and Chissamba. At V.S.P. we signed the civil register and returned to Chissamba for a church wedding. The service was in Umbundu. So she must obey when I speak to her in Umbundu.
We were to have been at the Administrar at 9 a.m. but were late. Mr. Steed borrowed a “Dodge” to take us there and broke a front spring on the way. Then he was still later getting away from V.S.P. so that we did not sit down to the wedding breakfast until after 3 o’clock.
AG says that the ceremony also incorporated some native customs.
Fred also reported to Alma on the honeymoon, which was one that their still unborn grandchildren would have enjoyed:
The whole series of delays made us late getting to Dondi so we spent the night here. In the morning we went to Mt. Elumbanganda, near Bailundo.
We had our tent pitched near the foot and next morning climbed to our camp on the top, about 400 meters higher. From the top we could see the Chileso Mountains, 75 miles away, Huambo could be seen about 50 miles in the other direction. There was a good mountain stream for our water supply.
We were in camp six days and then returned to Chissamba on the Thursday train.
Then they went back to America, by way of Capetown and London.
In America, with Sibyl and after
There was an option of going as a missionary to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where Kamba and Christine Simango, friends of Sibyl's, were working as missionaries. From what I can tell, it was quite a definite thing, not a “wouldn’t it be nice” matter. But ultimately Fred and Sibyl decided to stay in Massachusetts. We have a letter from Christine from January 7, 1930, saying:
A few lines to tell you how terribly disappointed I am to hear that you have decided not to come out to the field, I had so looked forward to the work during the next term with you as a co-worker and companion. On the other hand with so much uncertainty attached to P.E.A. work and we who are here know how trying it is, I cannot say that I altogether blame you, for trying to settle down when there is a good opening where you and Doctor can do as useful work, the needs of humanity are great everywhere.
I believe this was a job in a hospital in Westboro, Mass.
Around this time, Fred and Sibyl were in loco parentis for a while to a teenager named Curtis McDowell, who was attending Westboro Public Schools. Curtis’s parents, Henry and Bessie McDowell, were missionaries whom Fred and Sibyl had known in Angola. They were interesting people, so I have given them in a Non-Family page on this website.
Decades later, Fred’s and Sibyl’s daughter got in touch with Curtis, and asked him: What was it like, living with Fred and Sibyl? Here’s the most memorable story Curtis told her:
One day, he drove Fred’s car out onto the ice on some pond. (Imagine this kid, who grew up in Angola, drawn to the ice!) Nothing disastrous happened. The car didn’t break through the ice, and the car and the boy came home safe and sound. But Fred was furious. He was a wonderfully gentle man, who loved playing with children; sometime I’ve got to grab a quote from a letter from Sibyl in which she admires his gentle way with patients. But his anger could be explosive. He did try to curb it after Alma told him that it reminded her of their father. And that explosive anger made a memory that Curtis talked about decades later.
In 1934, James Michael Curley was elected governor of Massachusetts. He started his term in 1935. Fred’s daughter says that Fred lost his job at the Westboro hospital because Curley wanted his own people there. And that’s all that I know about it.
Fred was 56 years old. It was the middle of the Great Depression. Finding another job was impossible.
Sibyl did not have permission to work in the US, so while Fred looked for another job, she worked in a hospital in Canada. There were two years in which Fred stayed in Fernbank, Alma’s Woods Hole cottage, working on the Cape until Christmas, and then went up to Canada to be with Sibyl until June. I’ve asked his daughter if he used his knowledge of the Portuguese language in the Portuguese community on the Cape. She said no.
In 1936, Fred’s and Sibyl’s daughter was born in Ontario. They named her Alma Grace - a name that is interesting to me. Fred probably spent his life correcting people who assumed that his full name was Frederick. His sister Alma, whose full name was Alma Gracey Stokey - Gracey being a family name - probably spent her life correcting people who assumed that her middle name was Grace. Or even Gracie. So Fred and Sibyl, while wanting to name their daughter after Alma, decided to make things easier for her. Or maybe they liked the name Grace, with its religious associations.
Sibyl died in 1937 after a nine-month struggle with peritonitis. It was agonizing for Fred to watch a second wife in a long, slow decline. This is something that Alma Grace remembered hearing from her father.
Fred was still unemployed, and so he was unable to take care of Alma Grace. Sibyl had requested that Will and Kathleen in Atlanta take her in a if Sibyl died, and they did so. She started calling Will "Daddy", and when Fred came down to Atlanta to see her, she said: "Two Daddies." Fred didn't like that, so Will became "Daddy Will".
But Alma Grace didn't stay in Atlanta for very long. Sibyl's father came down from Canada and insisted that Alma Grace be with her maternal grandparents. This troubles me. Surely Mr. Hosking knew that Sibyl had chosen to have Will and Kathleen take care of her daughter, and surely he understood that Will, as Alma Grace's uncle, was also a close relation to Alma Grace. It seems likely, however, that the real problem was not kinship degrees but rather religion. The Hoskings were quite religious - Presbyterian, I believe. And Will and Kathleen were Christian Scientist. The Hoskings would not have wanted their granddaughter to be raised as a Christian Scientist. So Mr. Hosking insisted, and the Stokeys gave way.
The United States officially entered World War II on December 8, 1941. There were jobs aplenty at the Springfield Armory, not too far from where Alma lived, and Fred, drawing on his experience in the watchmaking factory in Canton in the 1890s, got a job at the Armory as a skilled mechanic, listed officially as an Essential Civilian. He was now able to take care of Alma Grace with the help of his sister Alma, though the logistics were complicated because both Fred and Alma were working.
For kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, Fred and AG went to Springfield on Monday morning, and stayed at the Milner Hotel. AG went to the MacDuffie School in Springfield. Or anyway, I think it’s MacDuffie. I’m having a bit of trouble nailing that down. On Friday Fred and AG would go back to South Hadley to spend the weekend with Alma. Then, after AG’s third grade year, Alma retired, so that AG could stay in South Hadley and attend the South Hadley public schools.
A few lines to tell you how terribly disappointed I am to hear that you have decided not to come out to the field, I had so looked forward to the work during the next term with you as a co-worker and companion. On the other hand with so much uncertainty attached to P.E.A. work and we who are here know how trying it is, I cannot say that I altogether blame you, for trying to settle down when there is a good opening where you and Doctor can do as useful work, the needs of humanity are great everywhere.
I believe this was a job in a hospital in Westboro, Mass.
Around this time, Fred and Sibyl were in loco parentis for a while to a teenager named Curtis McDowell, who was attending Westboro Public Schools. Curtis’s parents, Henry and Bessie McDowell, were missionaries whom Fred and Sibyl had known in Angola. They were interesting people, so I have given them in a Non-Family page on this website.
Decades later, Fred’s and Sibyl’s daughter got in touch with Curtis, and asked him: What was it like, living with Fred and Sibyl? Here’s the most memorable story Curtis told her:
One day, he drove Fred’s car out onto the ice on some pond. (Imagine this kid, who grew up in Angola, drawn to the ice!) Nothing disastrous happened. The car didn’t break through the ice, and the car and the boy came home safe and sound. But Fred was furious. He was a wonderfully gentle man, who loved playing with children; sometime I’ve got to grab a quote from a letter from Sibyl in which she admires his gentle way with patients. But his anger could be explosive. He did try to curb it after Alma told him that it reminded her of their father. And that explosive anger made a memory that Curtis talked about decades later.
In 1934, James Michael Curley was elected governor of Massachusetts. He started his term in 1935. Fred’s daughter says that Fred lost his job at the Westboro hospital because Curley wanted his own people there. And that’s all that I know about it.
Fred was 56 years old. It was the middle of the Great Depression. Finding another job was impossible.
Sibyl did not have permission to work in the US, so while Fred looked for another job, she worked in a hospital in Canada. There were two years in which Fred stayed in Fernbank, Alma’s Woods Hole cottage, working on the Cape until Christmas, and then went up to Canada to be with Sibyl until June. I’ve asked his daughter if he used his knowledge of the Portuguese language in the Portuguese community on the Cape. She said no.
In 1936, Fred’s and Sibyl’s daughter was born in Ontario. They named her Alma Grace - a name that is interesting to me. Fred probably spent his life correcting people who assumed that his full name was Frederick. His sister Alma, whose full name was Alma Gracey Stokey - Gracey being a family name - probably spent her life correcting people who assumed that her middle name was Grace. Or even Gracie. So Fred and Sibyl, while wanting to name their daughter after Alma, decided to make things easier for her. Or maybe they liked the name Grace, with its religious associations.
Sibyl died in 1937 after a nine-month struggle with peritonitis. It was agonizing for Fred to watch a second wife in a long, slow decline. This is something that Alma Grace remembered hearing from her father.
Fred was still unemployed, and so he was unable to take care of Alma Grace. Sibyl had requested that Will and Kathleen in Atlanta take her in a if Sibyl died, and they did so. She started calling Will "Daddy", and when Fred came down to Atlanta to see her, she said: "Two Daddies." Fred didn't like that, so Will became "Daddy Will".
But Alma Grace didn't stay in Atlanta for very long. Sibyl's father came down from Canada and insisted that Alma Grace be with her maternal grandparents. This troubles me. Surely Mr. Hosking knew that Sibyl had chosen to have Will and Kathleen take care of her daughter, and surely he understood that Will, as Alma Grace's uncle, was also a close relation to Alma Grace. It seems likely, however, that the real problem was not kinship degrees but rather religion. The Hoskings were quite religious - Presbyterian, I believe. And Will and Kathleen were Christian Scientist. The Hoskings would not have wanted their granddaughter to be raised as a Christian Scientist. So Mr. Hosking insisted, and the Stokeys gave way.
The United States officially entered World War II on December 8, 1941. There were jobs aplenty at the Springfield Armory, not too far from where Alma lived, and Fred, drawing on his experience in the watchmaking factory in Canton in the 1890s, got a job at the Armory as a skilled mechanic, listed officially as an Essential Civilian. He was now able to take care of Alma Grace with the help of his sister Alma, though the logistics were complicated because both Fred and Alma were working.
For kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, Fred and AG went to Springfield on Monday morning, and stayed at the Milner Hotel. AG went to the MacDuffie School in Springfield. Or anyway, I think it’s MacDuffie. I’m having a bit of trouble nailing that down. On Friday Fred and AG would go back to South Hadley to spend the weekend with Alma. Then, after AG’s third grade year, Alma retired, so that AG could stay in South Hadley and attend the South Hadley public schools.
Just as Fred had maintained contact with his first wife’s family, so also he maintained contact with Sibyl’s family. He drove Alma Grace to Ontario to visit her Hosking relatives there. He never drove above 40 miles per hour (fortunately, this was in the days before the interstate highways were built), so it would take them two days to get from Massachusetts to Ontario. In one of those trips, he took a detour to Camillus, New York, to show his daughter where he had not been killed in the bicycle accident half a century before.
Fred and Alma Grace spent time with Will, Alma, and Eva at Fernbank. Eva was quite unpleasant to Alma Grace on occasion. Fred told Alma Grace funny stories about Eva’s incompetence from his childhood with Eva. The wife of Fred's nephew Roger - Will's younger son - lived with the Stokeys at Fernbank in the summer of 1944, and decided that Alma Grace was too much of a mouthful for the name of a small child, and shortened it to AG.
Time passed. Sitting across from Will at the dining table at Fernbank, Fred noticed the decreased movement in Will’s face (the medical term is hypomimia), and correctly diagnosed that Will had Parkinson’s. In 1950, a few days before Christmas, the news came from Atlanta that Will had died, the first of the five Stokey siblings to go.
Fred himself was slowing down. He thought about the memories of his childhood that were being lost. One day, as he was lying on his back on his bed, AG came into his room. Fred took this opportunity to pass on some of his memories. He said, "Once there was a man who ...." and continued on. And on. And on some more. AG, age fourteen, wasn’t listening. She had come in merely to tell him that she was going someplace with her friends, and now her father, old enough to be her grandfather, was droning on, keeping her from what she wanted to do. She waited, twiddling her thumbs. Finally he finished: "And that's why nobody talks about your grandfather, but I wanted you to know he wasn't as bad as some people think.” AG abruptly realized that she had just been told some serious information about her mysterious and reviled grandfather Stokey, and she hadn’t heard a word of it. She couldn’t say, “Um, I wasn’t listening while you poured your heart out. Could you pour it out again?”
She regretted for the rest of her life that she wasn’t listening, and that she didn’t have the courage to ask him to repeat himself, or perhaps the wiliness to ask vague leading questions like, “So…he was bad, but not totally evil?” But it’s worth noting as well that Fred didn’t notice that she wasn’t listening while he talked about his younger days. It was, perhaps, one small sign of what might now be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease.
The signs grew larger. In 1955, now nineteen years old, AG was planning to go to England to study for a year, but she was worried about her father. She asked Alma if her father was going senile. Alma said no. AG was too young to question her aunt’s wisdom in this matter, so she went abroad as planned.
Alma and Fred spent Christmas in Wayland with Roger and his family - my immediate family. My sister Betsy, age six at the time, remembers crawling all over Uncle Fred. He was pretty much out of it, but, as always, happy to play with children.
The next summer, 1956, Alma went for a trip around the world with her friend Glady Green. The two of them met up with AG in England and she went with them for a part of the way, although she was still worried about her father, alone at home.
Meanwhile, back at home, one day in July - the 14th, I believe - the people in Fred’s apartment house noticed that his cat Tony (because of course there was a cat; he was supposed to be AG’s cat but of course he preferred Fred) was hanging around the door to his apartment, and nobody was letting Tony in. So they checked up on Fred, and found him dead. My mother - Fred’s niece-in-law - wrote to AG, telling her the news and saying that there didn’t seem to be any point for AG in coming home early from the trip with Alma and Glady. When AG did eventually come home, she and my mother cleared out Fred’s apartment.
AG doesn't know where Tony the cat ended up, but there were several people in the apartment building who liked cats and might have taken him in.
Sometime after Fred died, we received a gift that was made for him by somebody in Africa. It came to our house in Wayland; perhaps that was the forwarding address that was given for Fred’s apartment. It was a beautiful chessboard. I need to get a photograph of it. AG was still young and moving around, so the chessboard was kept at the Wayland house, hung on the wall. Years later my mother handed it over to AG. As of this writing (2023) my sister Betsy has the chessboard, and treasures it. Anyway, the chessboard would have arrived over 30 years after Fred left Africa. There’s a story there. Maybe someday I’ll find out more, but I doubt it. Here's a picture of the chessboard, hanging on Betsy's wall. I assume that the thing that it's hanging on was something that my mother had made.
Fred and Alma Grace spent time with Will, Alma, and Eva at Fernbank. Eva was quite unpleasant to Alma Grace on occasion. Fred told Alma Grace funny stories about Eva’s incompetence from his childhood with Eva. The wife of Fred's nephew Roger - Will's younger son - lived with the Stokeys at Fernbank in the summer of 1944, and decided that Alma Grace was too much of a mouthful for the name of a small child, and shortened it to AG.
Time passed. Sitting across from Will at the dining table at Fernbank, Fred noticed the decreased movement in Will’s face (the medical term is hypomimia), and correctly diagnosed that Will had Parkinson’s. In 1950, a few days before Christmas, the news came from Atlanta that Will had died, the first of the five Stokey siblings to go.
Fred himself was slowing down. He thought about the memories of his childhood that were being lost. One day, as he was lying on his back on his bed, AG came into his room. Fred took this opportunity to pass on some of his memories. He said, "Once there was a man who ...." and continued on. And on. And on some more. AG, age fourteen, wasn’t listening. She had come in merely to tell him that she was going someplace with her friends, and now her father, old enough to be her grandfather, was droning on, keeping her from what she wanted to do. She waited, twiddling her thumbs. Finally he finished: "And that's why nobody talks about your grandfather, but I wanted you to know he wasn't as bad as some people think.” AG abruptly realized that she had just been told some serious information about her mysterious and reviled grandfather Stokey, and she hadn’t heard a word of it. She couldn’t say, “Um, I wasn’t listening while you poured your heart out. Could you pour it out again?”
She regretted for the rest of her life that she wasn’t listening, and that she didn’t have the courage to ask him to repeat himself, or perhaps the wiliness to ask vague leading questions like, “So…he was bad, but not totally evil?” But it’s worth noting as well that Fred didn’t notice that she wasn’t listening while he talked about his younger days. It was, perhaps, one small sign of what might now be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s disease.
The signs grew larger. In 1955, now nineteen years old, AG was planning to go to England to study for a year, but she was worried about her father. She asked Alma if her father was going senile. Alma said no. AG was too young to question her aunt’s wisdom in this matter, so she went abroad as planned.
Alma and Fred spent Christmas in Wayland with Roger and his family - my immediate family. My sister Betsy, age six at the time, remembers crawling all over Uncle Fred. He was pretty much out of it, but, as always, happy to play with children.
The next summer, 1956, Alma went for a trip around the world with her friend Glady Green. The two of them met up with AG in England and she went with them for a part of the way, although she was still worried about her father, alone at home.
Meanwhile, back at home, one day in July - the 14th, I believe - the people in Fred’s apartment house noticed that his cat Tony (because of course there was a cat; he was supposed to be AG’s cat but of course he preferred Fred) was hanging around the door to his apartment, and nobody was letting Tony in. So they checked up on Fred, and found him dead. My mother - Fred’s niece-in-law - wrote to AG, telling her the news and saying that there didn’t seem to be any point for AG in coming home early from the trip with Alma and Glady. When AG did eventually come home, she and my mother cleared out Fred’s apartment.
AG doesn't know where Tony the cat ended up, but there were several people in the apartment building who liked cats and might have taken him in.
Sometime after Fred died, we received a gift that was made for him by somebody in Africa. It came to our house in Wayland; perhaps that was the forwarding address that was given for Fred’s apartment. It was a beautiful chessboard. I need to get a photograph of it. AG was still young and moving around, so the chessboard was kept at the Wayland house, hung on the wall. Years later my mother handed it over to AG. As of this writing (2023) my sister Betsy has the chessboard, and treasures it. Anyway, the chessboard would have arrived over 30 years after Fred left Africa. There’s a story there. Maybe someday I’ll find out more, but I doubt it. Here's a picture of the chessboard, hanging on Betsy's wall. I assume that the thing that it's hanging on was something that my mother had made.
The chessboard that Fred never saw.
AG named her eldest son Frederick. But we call him Fred.
And a final note: As I was working on this project, it occurred to me that if Fred hadn’t run into difficulties with the Canadian Mission Board, AG might well have been born in Angola and spent a good part of her childhood there, turning her into The Exotic Cousin. A strange thought.
FRED'S STORY: ---the story---~RELATED PAGES~---site navigation
FRED'S STORY: ---the story---related pages~SITE NAVIGATION~