Frans August Larson - Mongolia

Mongolia

Frans August Larson was the first Christian & Missionary Alliance missionary to Mongolia. The year was 1893, and Larson was now 23 years old. From the harbor city of Tientsin, he traveled to Beijing and on to Paotao, a distance of over 700 miles. Larson covered most of this distance on foot, since he was too tall to ride a donkey, and he was too much of an animal lover to accept a ride in a wagon drawn by draft animals that were relentlessly whipped by the driver.

Larson was gifted both in social matters and at languages. He came into contact with the prince of the province of Ordos, who provided him with a teacher of the Mongolian language. When he had learned enough to get by on his own, he made his way northward to Urga (modern day Ulan Bator) in order to refine his new language skills.

The trip took just over a month. He stayed in Urga one year, and then traveled southward again. He settled in Kalgan (Zhangjiakou) on the border between China and Mongolia, just south of the steppes and the northernmost arm of the Great Wall of China. There, he fell in love with an American woman missionary. She was a year older than he, her name was Mary Rogers, and she came from Albany in the state of New York. They married in 1897.

Kalgan lies about 140 miles northwest of Beijing, and was an important junction for caravan traffic westward to Sianking and northward to Mongolia and Russia. People who had business in those regions passed through Kalgan, and many visited the Larson family. One such person was Sven Hedin the world-famous Swedish explorer. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Another guest in the Larson household was future American President Herbert Hoover, an engineer working on the task of staking out a railroad between Beijing and the Mongolian border.