A newly published memoir, Moonlight Fertility, of Waynesburg native Helen Hoge Hornickel describes her life in China nearly a century ago.
“It seems to me that there are wonderful things in store for us, you and I,” wrote young Walter Chamberlain, the Waynesburg High School agriculture teacher, to his betrothed in 1919. Following a brief courtship, he had proposed to Helen Virginia Hoge over the Christmas holiday of 1918. Helen was a native of Waynesburg, and graduated from Waynesburg High School in 1911 and Waynesburg College in 1915. He mailed his love letter to Washington, Pennsylvania, where she was living at the time. They married in Waynesburg in the presence of many Hoge relatives on June 21, 1919.
Later that summer, Helen and Walter moved to Ithaca, New York, so that he could begin graduate studies in agriculture at Cornell University. During his first semester, he became interested in a foreign assignment. Representatives of the Presbyterian Mission Board visited Cornell to recruit faculty for Yenching University, a Christian college in Peking supported by Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational churches. Walter was selected to develop and direct its new department of agriculture.
The Chamberlain’s adventurous life abroad began when their steamship pulled away from the San Francisco harbor on Christmas Eve, 1920. During their five years in Peking, Walter established the agriculture department’s courses and research programs and Helen learned Chinese, taught English, and joined three other women in running a cottage industry. Their ease in socializing with American foreigners, Chinese business and government leaders, shopkeepers, seamstresses, and servants led to unusual opportunities and friendships across cultures. They explored Peking extensively, took weekend trips to the Western Hills beyond Peking’s walls, and traveled to cities and remote villages in northern China and Manchuria.
Throughout all these adventures, Helen was an astute observer of the Chinese and Manchu cultures. She witnessed the end of the Chinese dynasty and the turbulent politics of the new government. She took every opportunity to experience the daily life of the Chinese people and fixed it in her memory.
When it was time for Walter’s sabbatical in winter 1926, they decided to tour the world on their return to the United States. Helen kept a diary, capturing their experiences and impressions as they visited nearly 40 cities in six months.
Fifty years later, Helen wrote her memoirs of their five years in China, still able to speak Chinese and recite the names of Chinese generals. Grandniece Anne Hornickel Yuska edited Helen’s memoirs, diary, and photographs into Moonlit Fertility, a vivid account in word, image, and design of their life in Peking nearly a century ago.
Copies are available in the Eva K. Bowlby Public Library, Eberly Library at Waynesburg University, and Cornerstone Genealogical Society.
