Charles Alfred Stanley

Ursula Johnson Stanley

Theodore Smith Wilder

Frances Durand Wilder

Beginnings

In the early 1860s, two idealistic young men, both of them born and raised on farms in Ohio, began journeys that took them in totally different directions.  

Theodore Smith Wilder answered Abraham Lincoln's call to arms and went to war along with his fellow Oberlin College students, forming Company C of Ohio's Seventh Regiment, nicknamed "The Praying Company."  Severely injured in battle, he was able to finish college, marry Frances Durand, and father a son before dying in from the delayed effects of his wound.  

For more about the Wilders, click on Wilders

Charles Alfred Stanley traveled by sailing ship in 1862 with his bride, Ursula Johnson, to become one of the first American missionary families to reach North China, where he lived and worked until his retirement in 1909. 

The Wilder and Stanley families' destinies were joined in 1894 when Theodore Wilder's only son George married Charles Stanley's oldest daughter, Gertrude.

This web site is being created for the Wilder-Stanley families.  It will eventually enable many of the letters, photographs, paintings and other documents that were preserved by their children or in the archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to be shared by all of their descendants and their extended families.

To navigate the Wilder-Stanley web site, go to Site Map.  If your computer cannot handle vector graphics, go to  Directory.