James Hudson Taylor's great-great-grandfather was one of the most well-known Protestant missionaries in China and one of the most influential foreigners in China in the 19th century.
The first James Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission (CIM) in 1865 and spent 51 years of his life in China, where he died in June 1905, in Changsha , at the age of 73. The CIM brought over 1,000 missionaries to China from Britain, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and other Western countries; they established 125 schools and brought 18,000 Chinese into the church. It was the largest missionary organisation in China. Taylor could preach in Putonghua and the dialects of Shanghai, Ningbo and Hangzhou .
'We do not have to learn all these dialects today,' said James IV. 'The Communist government has implemented Mandarin [Putonghua] as the national language. This has facilitated the spread of the gospel. In Fuzhou, I can speak in Mandarin and be understood.'
His ancestor arrived in Shanghai on March 1, 1854, and, unusually for a foreign missionary, wore Chinese clothes and a pigtail, with shaven forehead, to make himself less conspicuous. After setting up the CIM, he recruited the first 21 missionaries and arrived with them in Shanghai in September 1866. The CIM accepted people from all denominations but promised no financial support; so missionaries had to rely on funds from individual Christians and not from any church institution. He accepted people from the working class, as well as single women - both new practices.
Taylor was not an ordained minister of an existing church; he had studied medicine at the Royal London Hospital, from which he eventually graduated after returning to England, following six years of challenging missionary service in China, in 1863.
During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, 58 missionaries of the CIM and 21 of their children were killed, more than any other mission. Taylor refused to accept payment for loss of life or property, to show 'the meekness and gentleness of Christ'.
In 1902, because of ill-health, Taylor resigned as director of the CIM. In 1905, he returned to China for the 11th and final time and died while visiting CIM work in Changsha. He was buried next to his first wife, Maria, in a cemetery in Zhenjiang near the Yangtze River. During the Cultural Revolution, the cemetery was levelled and an industrial building was constructed on the site.