Having obtained a permanent location, the Presbyterian missionaries
advanced to the long-cherished project of a school. Under date of
August, 1852, Dr. House makes entry:
“In evening we talked over plans for doing good, laying out
mission work, schools, bazaar schools, a Chinese teacher.
Will go to Rapri to visit our brother Quakieng.”
This last sentence refers to the Chinese who had been received into
the young church upon certificate. He lived at Rapri (Ratburi), a
few days’ journey northwest of Bangkok, where he conducted a school
for Chinese children. A week later the journal records: “On next
Sabbath (15th) Quakieng will begin to explain the Scripture to the
Chinese.” This indicates the first step forward, a teacher of the
Chinese language introduced as a means of gaining pupils from
among the Siamo-Chinese children. From this time until his death he
was fully associated with the school; and in November he removed
his family to live near the mission compound.
At the annual meeting of the Mission, Oct. 4, 1852, the journal
says:
“A superintendent of mission schools appointed; and myself
appointed to that office. Shall have new responsibilities and
important ones; would shrink, but dare not, cannot—must go
forward. Perhaps will find what I have been waiting for yet.
Talked over openings for starting schools. We all feel as if
we are but just organized—as it were, commencing.”
This appointment was after the doctor had fully abandoned medical
practise. The new school started off with good prospects. In
October Mrs. Mattoon began to give instruction in Siamese language
to the eight boys. The annual report to the Board, prepared perhaps
two months later, gives the enrollment at twenty-seven, including
the four girls in the families and day pupils; while in January the
doctor comments:
“Our schools are doing well, but too few pupils. Geography
and arithmetic in the boarding school (twelve pupils) now
fall to me.”
The use of the word “schools” in the plural is accounted for by the
fact that Mrs. Mattoon had succeeded about this time in organising
a class in the Peguan village, across the river. But the period
of daily instruction was manifestly not enough to counteract the
influence of the community. Having through a number of months
succeeded in winning the confidence of the parents, at length,
in February, 1853, she induced them to let their children (mostly
girls) go to live in the mission compound:
“February 9. Tomorrow we expect to have quite an accession
to the number of our boarding pupils—the whole (almost) of
the scholars at the Peguan village, where Mrs. Mattoon has
won the confidence of the parents as well as the love of
the children. Teacher Kieng reports that their mothers were
washing and scrubbing them as clean as possible today, and
their teeth have all got quite white, so long have they left
off chewing betel.
“February 10. And they have indeed come, the little ones whom
Mrs. Mattoon has allured from their mothers, to take up their
home with us. They hardly slept last night their mothers
said and were up early—and yet some tears were shed.... The
mothers came with them; showed them our school rooms, the new
bamboo bedsteads, the maps—China, Burmah, Ceylon, England,
America. Speaking of my mother—‘Is she yet alive?’ said one
of them, ‘now why did you leave your mother and come to live
in Siam.’... Ploi is engaged by Mrs. Mattoon to prepare their
food and to go to bathe with them.”
Thus began the first boarding school for girls at the Presbyterian
Mission in Siam.