Darjeeling Disaster – Triumph of the Six Lee Children

The Rev. D.H. & Ada Lee were missionaries in Darjeeling, India, together with their seven children. After five of her children were killed when a landslide swept away their house and a sixth died a few days later from tetanus, Ada Lee wrote this account of their short lives. Her intention was to provide solace for other Christian parents who had also lost children.

My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy of this public domain title for digitisation.

Ada Lee [1856-1948], The Darjeeling Disaster. Its Bright Side. The Triumph of the Six Lee Children. Calcutta: Evangelical Literature Depot, n.d. Pbk. pp.162. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Contents

• Foreword

1. Introduction
2. Vida Maud
3. Lois Gertrude
4. Wilbur David
5. Herbert Wilson
6. Ada Eunice
7. Esther Dennett
8. The Children’s Letters
9. Jessudar, The Bengali Girl
10. Wilbur’s Story
11. Conclusion

Foreword

I esteem it a personal privilege to call the attention of the reading public to “The Darjeeling Disaster: Its Bright Side,” a book telling the story of -the greatest tragedy in the life of any missionary family in all the history of Missions. This book has passed through many editions before this one. I desire to express my abiding conviction that it would be of great benefit to have this book placed in the Sunday School libraries of the Christian world and read in every home. It contains a story more thrilling than fiction, but it is not fiction. It is the story of the Christian living and marvellously triumphant translation of real children. I knew them well and loved them dearly. It sets forth an ideal Christian home, in which there were active vigorous boys and girls, and earnest’ Christian parents’. The story of this family presents a standard of Christian living for both parents and children. I have known lively boys and girls to read and re-read this hook until the pages were worn and soiled, with the result that their lives were transformed.

The book will tell its own story. But I wish in this introductory note, to tell a comforting part of the story, not contained in the book, and not generally known….

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