Grace Dyer Taylor

Grace Dyer Taylor
Gracie Taylor in 1866 age 6
Born	31 July 1859 Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
Died	23 August 1867 near Hangzhou, China

Grace Dyer Taylor (31 July 1859 – 23 August 1867) was the eldest surviving daughter of James Hudson Taylor and Maria Jane Dyer, Christian missionaries to China. The event of her death of meningitis at the age of eight near Hangzhou has been cited by mission historians such as Ruth Tucker, Roger Steer, and John Pollock among others as being a turning point in the history of the China Inland Mission.

Grace was born in Ningbo during the Second Opium War, the day after rioting broke out in parts of the city. The Taylors had only one means of escape if the church building where they lived ever came under attack: a rope hanging from a second story window down to the narrow canal behind their home. The last instance that they came close to needing it was the day before Grace was born.

In 1860 her parents took her on a furlough to England with them and while there, her father founded the China Inland Mission in 1865. She spent the next six years in London where three younger brothers joined the family.

In 1866 Grace was one of the four Taylor children to journey with the "Lammermuir Party", the largest group of Protestant missionaries that had ever sailed, returning to China in 1866.

Her father was criticized for taking unmarried women missionaries into China, and replied in this way,

On board the tea clipper Lammermuir, Grace shared a cabin with Emily Blatchley, who was in charge of teaching the Taylor children. Jennie Faulding was one of the first to take note of Grace's apparent conversion to Christianity along with a number of the crew while they sailed across the Indian Ocean. The Lammermuir was almost wrecked by two typhoons before arriving in battered shape at Shanghai. No lives were lost, but the passengers and crew were weary and exhausted on their arrival.