Welsh Journals

Llanofer when he as fifteen. He also spent three years at Llandovery College where he distinguished himself as a linguist, learning Greek, Latin and French. Sometime later he served for a year as an assistant teacher with an Independent minister by the name of Albert Newth at Oundle in Northamptonshire. He matriculated to the recently opened New College in London where he graduated in 1863. In the same year, on 4 June, he was ordained at his home church at Llanofer to serve as a missionaary in China with the London Missionary Society. The following month he and his bride, Caroline Godfrey, a farmer's daughter from Oundle, departed for Shanghai where they landed in December. In March the following year his wife died in his absence on giving birth to their child and this grieviously affected Robert Jermain. Subsequently he went to Beijing where he lectured for a while until he met with two Korean traders who informed him of the persecutions of Roman Catholics in their country. He noted that they had no Bibles in Korea and he decided to join the National Bible Society of Scotland in order to facilitate his own visit there when he intended to distribute Chinese Bibles. He ventured to the unknown country and stayed there for four months. He quickly picked up the rudiments of the language before returning to China. In 1866 there was a serious uprising in Korea and many Roman Catholic converts and a number of priests, including nine French priests, were murdered. The French authorities dispatched an admiral to Korea and the young missionary was able to join the expedition as a navigator and interpreter, but at a particular stop to replenish provisions the ship departed without him. However he was taken on by another ship, called the General Sherman, again as an interpreter. What follows next is not altogether clear. There are two main versions. The only certainty is that the young Fig. 3: Robert Jermain Thomas