Letter

Scope and Content

From Mrs Daisy Pepperell at 93 St. Albans Road, Westbury Park, Bristol, to an unnamed correspondent [Dr John Bowmer of the Methodist Archives] via John Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London.

She has enclosed for deposit in the Archives the first letter written in the Miao script [a montagnard people of China] invented by Samuel Pollard.

Her father Charles Trelease attended the Conference of 1886 which appointed Samuel Pollard and Francis Dymond as the first Bible Christian missionaries in China. Pollard begged those present to remember them in their prayers. Trelease never forgot and always took a keen interest in the activities of the China mission.

When Pollard came home on furlough, he used to stay at their family home. He once created a sensation by walking through the streets of Bridgewater in Chinese dress, and inviting those he met to a missionary meeting in Polden Street.

In later years they were thrilled by Pollard's reports of his work among the Miao and Nosu tribes. During what proved to be his last home furlough, the Trelease family travelled from Bridgewater to Taunton to meet him. As they talked with Pollard over the schoolroom tea table, the missionary expressed his surprise that they had travelled so far (12 miles) to see him. He then removed the enclosed Miao script from his pocket and presented it to Daisy. She has treasured it ever since and is now sending it to the Archives for safe-keeping.

The news of Pollard's death [September 1915] came as a shock to many. Daisy's father was very upset.