John Leighton Stuart - Early Life

Early Life

Born in Hangzhou, China, on June 24, 1876, of Presbyterian missionary parents from the United States. His father, John Linton Stuart, was a third-generation Presbyterian minister from a prominent family in Virginia and Kentucky and arrived in China in 1868, one of the first three ministers sent to China by the Southern Presbyterian church in the U.S. His mother, Mary Louisa Horton (known affectionately as "Mother Stuart" in Hangzhou), founded the Hangzhou School for Girls, one of the first institutions of its kind in China. Stuart had three younger brothers, David Todd (1878), Warren Horton (1880) and Robert Kirland (1883).

Although an American by nationality who spoke English with a southern accent, Stuart considered himself Chinese more than an American. He spoke the Hangzhou dialect. He was sent to school in the U.S. state of Virginia, where his outdated clothing and mid-19th century diction handed down from his missionary parents in China led to his being teased by classmates. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College and later Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, where he aspired to become a missionary educator.