(couldn’t find a photo)
Henry Stout was born on January 19th, 1838 in Raritan, NJ. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1865 and completed his work at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1868 and was ordained in the same year. Guido Verbeck requested a Reformed Church missionary in May and he departed for Japan the following year, along with his newlywed wife Elizabeth Provost.
Arriving a few months later, the Stouts were disappointed to find the Verbecks packing their stuff for Tokyo and leaving them in charge of the Nagasaki Mission a mere two weeks after they arrived. Stout took charge of Verbeck’s position as an English teacher at the government-run school. Like Verbeck, Stout hoped to cultivate a good relationship with the Japanese government. Soon, an arrangement to educate a few girls in Stout’s house in November 1872 increased in popularity so fast that arrangements had to be made for a new building. Although the school closed down in the summer of 1874, more Japanese schools for girls had opened and Stout welcomed the extra interest in educating women.
His efforts in creating churches proved to be more fraught. Encountering resistance from the government, his early attempts were met with failure until he created the Umegasaki Church, the first Protestant church in Nagasaki meant specifically for the Japanese residents of the city. Elizabeth’s health gradually deteriorated over the years and she died in 1902. Stout also began a feud with church leaders in Nagasaki in 1898 that lasted for years. After his daughter moved to Kobe in 1905, he decided he had had enough and resigned from the mission, eventually moving back to the US in 1906. He passed away on February 16th, 1912 in Lakehurst, NJ.
Stout’s legacy was immense – under his leadership in Nagasaki, the availability of schools and the Reformed Church spread immensely. Insisting that an education should be useful for daily life, Stout made an effort to decrease the Westernization of female education in Japan, instead promoting skills that women would actually need.
Sources:
Burke-Gaffney, Brian, and Lane R Earns. “Henry Stout.” Nagasaki: People, Places, and Scenes of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, 1859-1941, www.nfs.nias.ac.jp/page026.html. (link doesn’t work)