William Edwin Hoy (June 4, 1858 – March 3, 1927) was a Protestant missionary and educator in Japan and China.

Early life and education

William Edwin Hoy was born near

Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania Mifflinburg is a borough in Union County, located in Central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River Valley. Mifflinburg was first settled in 1792 by Elias and Catharina Jungman (Youngman) and their two children. They divided the land into 60’ by 1 ...

and graduated

Franklin and Marshall College Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It employs 175 full-time faculty members and has a student body of approximately 2,400 full-time students. It was founded upon the merger of Frankli ...

in 1882. He was ordained a priest in 1885 by the

Lancaster Theological Seminary Lancaster Theological Seminary is a seminary of the United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1825 by members of the German Reformed Church in the United States to provide theological education for prospective clergy an ...

Career

Hoy became a missionary for the

Reformed Church in the United States The Reformed Church in the United States (RCUS) is a Protestant Christian denomination in the United States. The present RCUS is a conservative, Calvinist denomination. It affirms the principles of the Reformation: ''Sola scriptura'' (Scripture ...

. His first posting was to Japan in 1886. He identified

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture, the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,091,407 in 525,828 households, and is one of Japan's 20 Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, desig ...

in northern Japan as strategic and with Reverend

Masayoshi Oshikawa Masayoshi Oshikawa (押川方義; 1850–1928) was a Japanese evangelist, political activist and founder and first president of Tohoku Gakuin University. Early life and education Masayoshi Oshikawa was born in 1850 in Iyo Province (current Ehi ...

started a small school to train Japanese pastors, the Sendai Theological Training School. This later became

Tohoku Gakuin University is a private university in Sendai, Japan. It was founded under a Christian background (specifically the German Reformed Church, which later was known as the Reformed Church in the United States. A large part of the Reformed Church in the United S ...

(Northern Japan University). He later started a girls school, the Miyagi Girls' School, which later became

Miyagi Gakuin Women's University is a private university in Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. History The Miyagi Girls' School was founded by the Reformed Church in the United States in Japan with the assistance of missionaries Masayoshi Oshikawa Masayoshi Oshikawa (押川方義 ...

. Suffering from asthma, and with many responsibilities including an English bimonthly journal, ''The Japan Evangelist'', he took a three-month health furlough in 1898 and traveled to China. "What he saw there fired him with enthusiasm that the Church must go forward in China," and he decided to move to

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

. Resigning from his Japan post, Hoy relocated to Yochow in 1901, and started a mission. By 1906 it had grown to have 20 missionaries. The mission was divided into three branches, evangelical, medical and educational, including the first girls school in Yochow. The hospital built by the mission was named Hoy Memorial Hospital. In 1914 he authored ''China Mision:Of the Reformed Church in the United States'', describing his missionary experiences in China. He held firm that Christ was only path to salvation, and that Buddhism "converts every Chinese into a spiritual mummy." The book has had many recent reprints.

Personal life

He married a Mary Ault, a teacher at the girls school in Japan. They had six children; their two daughters were also missionaries in China. In 1927 the revolutionary turmoil led him to be evacuated from China. He had a stroke and died aboard ship.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoy, William Edwin 1858 births 1927 deaths Missionary educators Franklin & Marshall College alumni Protestant missionaries in China Protestant missionaries in Japan