Devello Zelotes Sheffield

Background

He was born on August 13, 1841 in Gainesville, New York, United States, the son of Asa Campbell Sheffield, a farmer, and Caroline (Murry).

Education

His early education was obtained in Warsaw, Middlebury, and Alexander academies. In 1866 he entered Auburn Theological Seminary, where he graduated three years later.

Career

In 1861 he enlisted in the Union army, serving for two years. He was invalided home and to the end of his days bore the traces of his illness. He taught for about three years and for a time served as principal of the high school at Castile, New York.

Apparently he passed through a religious crisis in his middle twenties; having been skeptical, he was converted, and united with the Presbyterian Church in Castile in 1866. On May 2, 1869, he was ordained to the ministry by the Cayuga Presbytery; and soon afterward he sailed for China as a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

On arriving in China he was assigned to Tungchow, a small city thirteen miles from Peking, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. Sheffield's achievements were mainly in education, literature, and administration. He taught a wide variety of subjects in his new school, including courses in the affiliated Gordon Theological Seminary. When to the high school was added North China College (organized in 1892 - 93) he became the president of the new institution, and continued as such when by the cooperation of other missions (1902 - 03) the scope of the college was enlarged and its name changed to North China Union College.

He retired in 1909 only because of advancing years. As president he taught and also for a long period did most of the preaching in the college church. He continued to teach until the year before his death. He was the author of several books in Chinese, which largely grew out of his teaching.

He did much of the work on the standard Protestant cooperative revision of the New Testament in classical style, and was engaged in a similar revision of the Old Testament when, in 1912, failing health compelled him to give up his accustomed activities.

In addition to his exacting labors as a teacher and author he found time to serve in many administrative capacities - on the many committees which are a concomitant of Protestant missions, as secretary of his mission, and as president of the (Protestant) Educational Association of China (1896 - 99).

He died at Peitaiho, in North China.

Achievements

• Being a Presbyterian missionary to Tungchow, Devello Zelotes Sheffield established a school, which became North China College. He constructed a typewriter for the Chinese language as well as much of the apparatus required in college teaching. His work Universal History had a widest circulation in China. He had also assisted in preparing the International Sunday School lessons in Chinese and in the revision of S. Wells Williams' Chinese-English dictionary.

Personality

He had the reputation of being an excellent instructor, a strict disciplinarian, and an impressive preacher. By dint of the persistence, diligence, and thoroughness which were characteristic of him he achieved a remarkable knowledge of the Chinese language.

He was slight of build and not of robust physique. He was wise in counsel, logical of mind, of a masterful spirit, ripe in judgment, and in his later years tolerant and possessed of a certain childlike simplicity.

He had mechanical abilities.

Connections

On July 27 he married Eleanor Woodhull Sherrill of Pike, New York. He had three daughters and two sons, one of whom died in infancy.

Father:

Asa Campbell Sheffield

Mother:

Caroline (Murry)

Spouse:

Eleanor Woodhull Sherrill