Louise Van Arnam

Louise Maria Van Arnam Huie (née Van Arnam; January 26, 1864 – March 20, 1944) was a Presbyterian missionary, community organizer, educator, wife of Chinese Presbyterian minister Reverend Huie Kin, and mother of ten children.

Trained in missionary work at the Bethany Institute of New York, Louise met and married Huie Kin, a Presbyterian pastor who had immigrated from Guangzhou, China to the United States at the age of fourteen. From the 1880s to the Reverend Huie Kin’s retirement in 1925, the couple built and maintained a vibrant Chinese Presbyterian Mission which served the Chinese community of New York City with access to education, lodging, healthcare, and social welfare. They raised nine surviving children.

Louise Van Arnam was the eldest daughter of Caroline A. Wood and John T. Van Arnam (sometimes spelled Van Arnum), a Dutch American whose vocation is listed variably as “manufacturer,” “cigar maker,” “coffee mill worker,” and “expressmen”. Born in Kenosha, WI and raised in her ancestral hometown of Troy, New York, in the village of Lansingburgh, Louise had a sister, Emma, who died in infancy, and a sister, Harriet Lapes Van Arnam, eight years her junior.

While attending a conference in the summer of 1886, Louise heard Mrs. A. G. Ruliffson speak about the education of missionaries at Bethany Institute of New York City. At the age of 22, Louise was inspired to enroll as a student. She met Huie Kin at a Chinese New Year feast held at the Presbyterian Chinese Mission. She also came to teach at the Mission school as a substitute for her classmate.

In his memoir, Reminiscences, Huie Kin describes their meeting as love at first sight. “Our common interest in mission work brought us together frequently, and like any young man bent on winning a fair maiden, I made use of every opportunity to cultivate her good opinion and strengthen the bonds that held us together.” This meant attending the prayer meetings where Louise was studying, and inviting her to the Mission to help and consult about their work. “More and more her interest in the Chinese people grew, acquaintance deepened into friendship, and friendship ripened into life comradeship.”

He goes on to describe the various meetings they had with close friends and family about their decision to marry across race and culture. Louise’s father was concerned about the stigma his daughter may carry in marrying a Chinaman, and the consequences for their children; Huie’s friend and mentor in the New York Presbyterian ministry, Rev. George Alexander, asked if Louise had fully considered the millennia of cultural difference which stood between her and the man she had chosen to accept as her husband. To both men, Louise’s answers were confident and “to the point”—the Lord God would be at their backs, and she trusted that their children would be able to take their place in the world as the equals of any other young men and women. Louise’s mother, Caroline, told her privately that “she was old enough to know what she was doing and that she would not stand in the way of her happiness.”
The couple was married in a small ceremony on April 4, 1889 by Dr. Alexander. They went to Washington DC for their honeymoon where, through an introduction by the Chinese Legation (Embassy), they were received by President Henry Harrison and Louise was given a bouquet of flowers from the White House gardens. In stark contrast to this warm reception was the fact that Louise had lost her U.S. citizenship due to the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882.

The year 1890 was a trying one. Louise became a mother to son Irving in March. In September, Louise’s mother Caroline, long afflicted by mental illness, committed suicide by firearm in her home while Louise’s father and 18-year-old sister slept.

In October of 1891, a second son Tom Kin was born. In two years, daughter Harriet Louise was born, followed by daughter Alice two years after that. With Alice still in infancy, Tom Kin died at age 4 in 1895. Irving fell ill with scarlet fever in 1896 while he and Louise traveled to Northfield, MA for “a rest”. They were visited in the middle of the night by D. L. Moody, a self-made and well-known evangelist and founder of Northfield Mount Hernon, who had come to check on the family.

From 1897 to 1902, the Chinese Mission occupied the Lenox Mansion at 53 Fifth Avenue. In this span of years, daughters Caroline (1897), Helen (1899), and Ruth (1901) were born. The Lenox Mansion building was sold and the Mission moved to the vacated Chinese Consulate, with the third and fourth floors converted into a dormitory for visitors and Chinese students.

Huie Kin’s vision for his family was to be totally integrated into the life and work of the Chinese Mission and the people he served. “In this,” he writes, “Mrs. Huie heartily supported me, although it meant added work for her. Our home became the gathering center of the mission, and Mrs. Huie its moving spirit.” Indeed, Louise and Huie Kin were partners in the work of helping the Chinese community. When Huie Kin was commissioned by the Presbytery in 1896 to bring thirty boys from China to the U. S. to start a boys’ day school, Louise received them at a large house in Metuchen, NJ, which she had rented, furnished and otherwise prepared for their arrival. One of the residents, a Mr. Joe Lee, recalls that “When Sunday came around Mrs. Huie used to chase after us to make us wash our faces, comb our hair and dress up for church, some in Chinese style, others in American. We formed a procession with her leading and I was tickled to death when, after church, streams of girls and boys came to watch us leave as though we were from the antique shops of China.”

A 1907 article in The Literary Digest suggests that Louise used her status as a white person to advocate for the Chinese community, including managing the Mission’s real estate deals and fundraising: “She speaks and does what a Chinese cannot do with the best advantage in America. […] She is responsible for the present building and later the freeing of it from debt.” The writer was impressed that Louise was able to accomplish so much despite rearing nine children: “She is the leading spirit in a woman’s club. She adds to the family income by renting rooms in her big house to various persons, among whom are Chinese and Japanese students at Columbia. She has kept her one servant—a German woman—for the last sixteen years. Some persons will consider this last achievement the greatest of all…”

Circa 1903.

In 1902, youngest daughter Dorothy Esther Te-lan was born.

In 1903, Louise started the first kindergarten in Chinatown. To reassure the mothers, she would pick up each child from their home and drop them off afterwards. Later the Board of Education provided a regular teacher, and Louise turned to raising funds to establish financial security for the school. It was eventually turned over to the local Morning Star Mission.

In 1904, Louise and Huie Kin attended the St. Louis World’s Fair, known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Inventions which had their public debut there included the wireless telephone, X-ray machine, infant incubator, automobiles powered by gas, steam and electricity, and the drink Dr Pepper. They then traveled on to San Francisco, where they met with friends and were introduced to Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

In 1905, twin sons Albert and Arthur were born.

The family, circa 1911.

In May of 1908, Huie Kin and Louise moved the Chinese Mission and Sunday School once more to 223-225 East 31st Street between Second and Third Avenues. This was to become the location of the First Chinese Presbyterian Church in 1915, with Reverend Huie Kin serving as Minister. The building had a library, reading rooms, gymnasium, and a bowling alley. Chinese students at New York colleges rented rooms on the third floor through the Chinese YMCA. The oldest three daughters (Louise, Alice, and Caroline) taught Sunday school and formed an orchestra to play in the auditorium, which served as the chapel. On Sundays, the Mission hosted forty or fifty people for dinner, required thousands of pounds of rice each year.

Louise writes in an October 1913 letter to Henry Fearing, a supporter of the Chinese Students’ Alliance, “My faith was strengthened and my determination made anew to work more faithfully to make known the truth among our beloved people.” She went on to tell how she had been “more or less” sick ever since they had moved to the new building five years before. She wondered if it was the close quarters or living on the fourth floor and having to go to the first floor or basement continually to do work. She wrote, “I can thank God for his strengthening this summer and I am determined that with His help and guidance I will serve Him with my renewed strength…The older girls are good cooks and the younger ones, good helpers.” She told how everyone was back at school, “studying to fit themselves for Christ[’s] work in China.”

In 1918, Louise and Huie Kin visited Havana, Cuba, where they encountered the large Chinese community there, “numbering about five thousand, mostly engaged in retail trade, restaurants and on plantations. Some of the largest grocery stores were owned and run by our people. […] Nearly everybody hailed originally from my old home, Sunning in South China, and so we were warmly received everywhere.”

Eldest son Irving, Louise, and eldest daughter Louise, with Huie Kin, seated.

In 1919, the couple traveled to Shanghai with their 22-year-old daughter Caroline. They visited Dr. Sun Yat Sen, living in retirement in Shanghai’s French Concession, and saw their eldest daughter, Louise, and her husband, Zhang Fuliang, at their home in Changsha, Hunan, where Zhang taught at Yali, Yale-in-China.

After Huie Kin retired in March of 1925 due to his health, the couple lived in a house purchased for them by their son Irving, at 15 Grant Avenue in White Plains, NY.

In 1933, Louise petitioned for U. S. citizenship that she had lost upon marriage. She was able to regain it due to an amendment in 1931 to the Cable Act of 1922 “allowing females to retain their citizenship even after marrying aliens ineligible for U.S. citizenship.” With her U.S. passport, she and Huie Kin traveled to Shanghai to visit all six of their daughters: Louise in Shanghai; Helen who traveled to Shanghai from Wuhan; Caroline, Ruth and Dorothy in Beijing and Alice in Tingxian.

Huie Kin died from pneumonia on 18 Jan 1934 in Beijing, China. He was buried at an Episcopal cemetery in Beijing. Louise remained in China until 1936 and then returned to her son Albert’s house in Greenwich, CT. During the winter of 1943 to 1944, Louise lived with Arthur and Isabel Huie in Northford, CT. Louise died on March 20, 1944 at the age of 80, in New Haven, Connecticut and was buried in Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. Her epitaph reads “Louise Van Arnam, 1864-1944, In Memory of, her Beloved Husband, Rev. Huie Kin, 1854-1934, At Rest Peiping, China”.