Edwin Stevens (missionary)

Edwin Stevens (August 1802 – January 5, 1837) was a Protestant American missionary to the Qing Empire primarily remembered for his probable role in the conversion of Hong Xiuquan, thus indirectly sparking the Taiping Rebellion.

Stevens was born in August 1802 in New Canaan, Connecticut. He attended Yale College (1824–1828) and Yale Divinity School (1829–1832), serving as a teacher and principal at a school in Aurora, New York, in between. While at Yale, he befriended Peter Parker, who later became a medical missionary to Guangdong; in April 1832, while at its seminary, he accepted appointment as the American Seamen's Friend Society's chaplain at Guangzhou (then romanized "Canton"). He was one of three foreign missionaries sent out by the ASFS around that time, along with John Diell to Honolulu in the Kingdom of Hawaii and F.S. Mines to Marseilles, France.

Ordained as a minister on June 7, he received $376.19 in donations from the New Haven ASFS to help pay his way and a further $50 from its United Society's Missionary Association to print tracts and Bibles in China. He travelled to Philadelphia and left aboard the Morrison on June 29, and, despite falling ill through the first half of his journey, arrived off Nei Lingding ("Lintin"), the oceanic anchorage for ships entering or leaving Guangzhou, on October 24. He reached Guangzhou two days later.

...
Wikipedia