Alvin Pierson Parker was an American missionary to China.
Background
Alvin Pierson Parker was born on August 7, 1850 in Austin, Travis County, Texas, United States. He was the son of Peter and Mary (Boyce) Parker. Both his father and mother were recently from Virginia. When he was still an infant the family moved to Missouri, where on pioneer farms, first near Hannibal and then in Ralls County, he grew up, sharing in the hard physical labor of frontier agriculture. His parents were earnestly religious, his father having a local preacher's license in the Methodist Church. Opportunities for education were meager, but he had, probably through his father, a passion for learning.
Education
Alvin Pierson Parker attended country schools and Van Rassler Academy. The money he had saved for college expenses was needed by the family.
Career
For a time Alvin Pierson Parker taught school in Virginia. Then, after a deep religious experience, he decided to enter the ministry and served several charges. In 1875 he went to China as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. For several years he was stationed at Soochow, where he was largely responsible for the founding of the strong Methodist Church of which he was long the pastor. He also established and was for years at the head of the Buffington School, later the Buffington Institute, one of the forerunners of Soochow University. At least once he was in charge of his mission's hospital in Soochow. He was transferred to Shanghai in 1896 and there became president of the Anglo-Chinese College, serving in that capacity until 1906.
For a time Alvin Pierson Parker was presiding elder of the Shanghai Conference of his Church. He was a man of scholarly tastes, and, in spite of the deficiencies in his early formal education, he taught himself enough Greek and Hebrew to enable him to use the Bible in the original, and he achieved a remarkable command of the Chinese language. Much of his time was given to the preparation of literature. He assisted in the translation of the Bible into the Soochow and Shanghai dialects, translated into Chinese a course of mathematics from algebra to mechanics, collaborated in the preparation of a hymnal, and translated and prepared notes on the International Sunday-school Lessons. He had a part in compiling a vocabulary of the Shanghai dialect and in the revision of the translation of the Old Testament into classical Chinese.
He was long editor of the Chinese Christian Advocate and prepared material for both the English and Chinese editions of that periodical. He served as editorial secretary of the China Sunday School Union, and he was book editor of the China Conference. For many of his later years he gave his main strength to the Christian Literature Society for China and for a time was chairman of the editorial staff of that organization. His Southern Methodism in China (1924) was going through the press at his death. In addition to all these literary labors he found time to serve on many of the organizations which had to do with local and national policies of Protestant missions in China, among them the (Christian) Educational Association of China and the National Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association.
Alvin Pierson Parker preached almost every Sunday of his long career. His counsel was sought by diplomats and other officials and he was offered but declined an advisorship to the Emperor of Korea and a high post in the Chinese ministry of education. In 1923 he returned to the United States on what he hoped was to be merely a furlough but while there died on September 10, 1924, in Oakland, California. In accordance with his wish, he was buried in China.
Achievements
Alvin Pierson Parker was known for his translation of "The Methodist Discipline", several books of "The Expositors' Bible", "The American Statesman Series", "The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics", etc.
Connections
Alvin Pierson Parker was twice married. First, on December 1878, to Alice Scudder Coole, and on February 1903, to Susan Williams.
