Thomas A. Lambie: Missionary Doctor and Entrepreneur

Family, Early Life, and Education

Our Lord desires you to have swift feet to do His will.

Thomas A. Lambie, A Bruised Reed, 91

The family background of Thomas Alexander Lambie is known back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. France, Scotland, and Holland each contributed to his lineage as his forebears made their way to the United States.

Jean Pierre Sioussat, one of Lambie’s great-grandfathers, was born in Paris in 1781 and lived through the Reign of Terror there and the eventual beheading of Louis XVI in 1793. In order to escape the tyranny of the French revolution, Sioussat went to sea in a French merchant vessel at a young age. In 1805 he jumped ship in New York and traveled directly to Washington, DC, where he later was employed by President Madison as doorkeeper to the White House. Dolly Madison, the president’s wife, took a fancy to Jean Sioussat (by then nicknamed French John), and retained him as her private assistant for the various elaborate state functions hosted at the White House. During the burning of Washington in 1814, Sioussat performed a heroic deed. "John Sioussa [sic] cut the [Gilbert] Stuart portrait of Washington from its frame with his penknife, and carried it to a place of safety. He warned those who would have rolled it up to keep it straight."¹ He died in 1864 at the age of 83 having been married three times.²

One of Thomas Lambie’s great-grandmothers, Charlotte Julia De Graff, was born in 1799 in Holland.³ Because of political upheaval in Holland, around 1818 she and her husband sailed for the New World. Their ship was wrecked in a stormy sea off the American coast; only Charlotte and two of the sailors survived. Now without her husband, Charlotte and the two sailors were picked up by a passing ship and taken to the New York harbor. Rather than seeking help from compatriots in New York, Charlotte began walking to Washington, DC, the country’s capital. At Bladensburg she sank, exhausted, by a tree to die, overcome by physical fatigue and the sorrows that had so early beset her life.⁴ Charlotte was found in that exhausted state by a Mrs. King and was eventually placed in various Episcopalian homes in Washington where she was shown kindness. In 1820 she married John Sioussa (the t had been dropped from the family name), a widower with four children. Charlotte and John had ten children, four of whom died in infancy.⁵

One of Charlotte and John’s daughters, Aimee, married William Lambie. They became Thomas Lambie’s paternal grandparents. With roots in Paisley, Scotland, William Lambie was a stonemason who found employment in Washington, DC. The couple had five sons and two daughters.⁶ Sadly, father William died soon after their last child was born. Mother Aimee and the seven children eventually moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where jobs were more readily available.⁷

Thomas A. Lambie: Early years in eastern United States

The oldest son of William and Aimee Lambie, John S. Lambie, was an aggressive and able young workman, who attempted to fill the role of his deceased father and to provide for the material needs of the household. He was also an eager student and graduated in first place from the recently established Pittsburgh High School. Following that he went on to study law. John S. Lambie was also a sincere Christian and was noted as one of the founders of the Eighth United Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. He served as a church trustee, as treasurer, and for many years as the superintendent of the Bible Class. He was also a leader in political affairs in the city of Pittsburgh. A gifted speaker, he made many speeches for the Republican Party, seeking the election of noteworthy candidates from President Lincoln’s time in office until 1903. His political friends included President McKinley. As a follower of Christ, John had a heart to help the poor. He enjoyed good literature and art and, with a keen eye for flowers, was a well-known figure among the horticulturists of Pittsburgh. Soon after the termination of the Civil War in 1865, he married Nancy Cunningham, who gave birth to one daughter, Bessie, born in 1866. But Nancy passed away soon after Bessie’s birth; John married again, to Annie Robertson, around 1870.

Annie Robertson Lambie also had Scottish roots; her father had come from near Glasgow and migrated to western Pennsylvania. Annie’s mother was from high-bred Virginia stock. John S. and Annie had eight children, five girls and three boys. Counting Bessie, their seventh child (and third son) was Thomas Alexander Lambie, born in Pittsburgh in 1885, the subject of this biography. Of his parents, Lambie wrote in A Doctor without a Country, Into their happy home nine children were born: six girls, three boys.⁸ See accompanying table.⁹

Because John S. was overly involved with civic activities and allowed his law practice to suffer neglect, the Lambie family struggled financially. Mother Annie, however, was a frugal manager and gave wise direction to the management of the household finances. She was also the spiritual nurturer of the nine children, especially after their father died in 1903 following a protracted illness. It is a lasting testimony to Annie’s courage and steadfast faith in God that she was able to manage the family’s modest estate and was concerned that her children were well educated and raised in a godly manner.

Another significant person in the life of young Thomas was the saintly James M. Wallace, pastor of the Eighth United Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, who provided him with kind and loving counsel. At an early age Thomas believed in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord and began to walk a disciplined Christian life. Two years before his death in 1954, he wrote about his spiritual pilgrimage,

When I was eleven years old I had a dream or a vision that I have never told to anyone but it brought to me sure conviction that I was Christ’s. I have never wavered from that belief. I joined the church and then when Father and Mother walked to the communicants’ benches, I, with six or eight brothers and sisters, walked with them and the psalm we always sang while doing so was Psalm

128

: How blest and happy is the man that walketh not astray . . . and then like olive plants thy children compassing thy table round. I rejoice that even today I am one of those olive plants around my Heavenly Father’s table.¹⁰

This sure belief gave Thomas the spiritual and moral courage to retain his Christian commitment in an elementary school environment where the majority of the students were non-evangelical. His experience at Pittsburgh High School was uplifting, with a number of stalwart teachers who challenged him intellectually.

When Thomas enrolled in Western Pennsylvania Medical College, located in Pittsburgh, he endured a number of trying experiences. Incoming students found the curriculum to be very difficult, and many dropped out. The students themselves were unruly, fistfights were common, and profanity and obscene language were used in the hallways. The environment made it difficult for a Christian to stay the course. That the equipment in the laboratories was below standard added to students’ difficulties. But with determination, discipline, and the benefit of summer jobs to pay school fees, he graduated from medical school in 1907. His summer employment included doing land surveying and engaging in house-to-house sales of various goods.¹¹

Thomas Lambie was regular in attending the Eighth United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, an evangelical church in which the Lambie family had historical roots. As mentioned, his father, John S., was an elder and taught Sunday school there. While Thomas was in medical school, he heard about various worldwide doors for missionary service with the denomination’s Foreign Missions Board. For example, China was open for missionaries to enter, and Korea also was asking for more recruits. Following the colonial powers’ Berlin Conference of 1884–85, mission societies such as the Foreign Missions Board of the United Presbyterian Church of North America (FMBUPC) gained access to place missionaries in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan under the aegis of the British colonial administration. Methodist John R. Mott (1865–1955), the long-serving leader of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) as well as of the World Student Christian Federation, challenged young Christians with the slogan The Evangelization of the World in This Generation.¹² Conferences in churches and mission conventions—such as the New Wilmington Missionary Conference, in western Pennsylvania, and others along the eastern seaboard of the United States—challenged many young people to serve as missionaries.¹³

It was at the first New Wilmington Missionary Conference that Thomas and his younger sister Marguerite (often referred to as Marg) committed their lives to wholeheartedly serve Jesus Christ.¹⁴ The Eighth United Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh heartily endorsed Lambie’s call to missions. So, as a young man he applied on January 22, 1906, to serve as a missionary with the Foreign Missions Board of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, completing all thirty-eight of the board’s application questions.¹⁵ When asked what his motive was for missionary service, he responded, I earnestly hope that it is my love for God and my desire to bring Christ’s Kingdom upon earth that impels me.¹⁶ Asked why his preference was to serve in Sudan or in India, he responded, It seems to me that the need for medical service at least is greater in these two fields.¹⁷ The Eighth Presbyterian Church readily affirmed their young member with full financial support. He was assigned by the Foreign Missions Board to serve in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a region with great physical and spiritual needs.

Under the leading of God’s providence, inexperienced Dr. Thomas A. Lambie, only twenty-two years of age but full of enthusiasm and energy, set sail from the United States for Sudan, via Egypt, in September, 1907. For the uninitiated medical doctor an exciting new career was opening up.

1

. This statement, by a certain E.M.G., appears on page

9

of Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia De Graff, a

42

-page document dated

1887

. (The document is now in the personal archives of Margaret Rees Hall, who resides in Kerry [near Newtown], Wales.) Lambie’s account differs. He writes of Sioussat cutting the painting from the frame and wrapping it around his body under his greatcoat; see Lambie, Doctor without a Country,

13

. The discrepancy between accounts becomes greater when, more recently, Peter Snow reports that according to Marion Meckenburg, the conservator, there is no evidence that the canvas of the Washington portrait was ever cut to remove it from its frame; see Snow, When Britain Burned the White House,

108

.

2

. E.M.G., Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia De Graff,

18

, Margaret Hall Special Collection (hereinafter MHSC).

3

. E.M.G., Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia De Graff,

21

.

4

. E.M.G., Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia De Graff,

24

.

5

. E.M.G., Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia De Graff,

26

.

6

. Lambie, Doctor without a Country,

13

.

7

. The information for Aimee Sioussa found at www.ancestry.com does not correlate exactly with the account provided by Lambie, Doctor without a Country,

13

.

8

. Lambie, Doctor without a Country,

14

.

9

. Margaret Hall provided the information in this table on July

19

,

2016

, in the Balisky home, Grande Prairie, AB, Canada.

10

. Lambie, A Bride for His Son,

130

.

11

. See Lambie, Doctor without a Country,

13

–

15

.

12

. Norman E. Thomas, John R. Mott, in Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions,

476

–

77

.

13

. Lambie, A Doctor Carries On,

14

.

14

. William B. Anderson, "Thomas A. Lambie: Missionary Pioneer in Sudan and Ethiopia,

1907

–

1942

," in Pierli, Ratti, and Wheeler, Gateway to the Heart of Africa,

127

–

45

.

15

. Lambie, Application for Appointment as a Missionary, Foreign Missions Board of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, Presbyterian Historical Society: National Archives of the PC(USA), Philadelphia.

16

. Lambie, Response to question

18

, Application for Appointment as a Missionary.

17

. Lambie, Response to question

22

, Application for Appointment as a Missionary.

2

Missionary Service in the Sudan, 1907–1917

Suffering is not for punishment, but it is necessary to make us fit for service.

Thomas A. Lambie, A Bruised Reed, 30

Thomas Lambie arrived in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1907. Senior missionary colleagues soon dubbed the twenty-two-year-old upstart medical doctor the most famous loose cannon on the deck of the American [Presbyterian] Mission ship in Africa during these years.¹⁸ He was eager to tackle the evangelization of Sudan, in accord with the Student Volunteer Movement watchword, in his generation. The sea voyage terminated at Egypt’s port of Alexandria. He found Alexandria as modern a city as any in Europe. While there he was introduced to several long-time stalwarts of the American Mission to Sudan, including Rev. and Mrs. J. Kelly (Grace) Giffen—men and women of determination with a passion to launch the mission in the Sudan. It was also in Alexandria that he first met another newly arrived Presbyterian missionary, Miss Charlotte Claney, a schoolteacher. Lambie described her as bright and vivacious; somehow I found her attractive.¹⁹ Within two years they were married. Following their wedding, also in Alexandria, on April 6, 1909, the Lambies boarded a train to the metropolis of Cairo. Before heading further south, they also viewed the majestic pyramids, monuments that had overlooked the desert for thousands of years.

But in 1907, while still single, Lambie traveled south through the desert, first by train, then by steamboat up the Nile as far as the first cataract, and then again by train, finally arriving at Khartoum North, on the Egyptian side. Khartoum is located at the confluence of two large rivers, the White Nile, flowing north from the deep south, and the Blue Nile, which tumbled down the mountain escarpments of Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia) to the east. Khartoum South was the hub of the American Presbyterian Mission for the entire Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The city of Omdurman is located across the White Nile from Khartoum. It was a significant city. In the late nineteenth century, General Gordon estimated that with a population of 34,000 and with the Mahdi and his successor, Khalifa, present in it, Omdurman was one of the larger cities of Africa.²⁰

Soon after Lambie arrived in Khartoum in 1907, Grace Giffen asked him to cross the river to Omdurman. She wished for him to temporarily carry on the medical clinic of Dr. H. T. McLaughlin, who was away at a mission association meeting being held at Doleib Hill, just south of Malakal (now in South Sudan). Since he lacked knowledge of Arabic, Lambie experienced considerable frustration in Omdurman as he attempted to oversee his first medical clinic there. Eventually he was supplied with a young translator. (Dr. McLaughlin, he came to learn, was an avid hunter of the Sudan bushbuck and was known as one of the mission’s Nimrods.) He soon developed a high respect for both Dr. McLaughlin and Rev. Giffen, two mature mission leaders who had made an extensive survey up the White Nile some four years previously. Both the McLaughlins and the Giffens were passionate in extending the kingdom of God to the various Sudanese ethnic groups. Lambie wrote:

Words can never express the high regard I have always had for Dr. and Mrs. Giffen. They were all that missionaries should be. Already veterans before leaving Egypt, they spent the last thirty years of their lives in the inhospitable Sudan. Ever kind-hearted and cheery, always unselfish, always willing by every way to make Christ known, there was nothing sanctimonious about them—just pure goodness that shone out of every word and act.²¹

Lambie’s first assignment with the American Mission in Southern Sudan, prior to his marriage to Charlotte, was at the mission station named Doleib Hill, a slight mound several hundred feet above the Sobat River which flowed on west into the White Nile. The station, situated some thirty miles south of Malakal, lay among the Shilluk. The McLaughlins and Giffens had pioneered the establishment of the Doleib Hill outreach among the Shilluk people in 1903. When Lambie arrived at Doleib Hill, Rev. Ralph Carson, his wife, and their two small daughters were stationed there along with Mr. Ralph W. Tidrick, a trained agriculturalist. Malarial attacks were rampant among the newly assigned missionaries, and this portion of Sudan was known as the white man’s grave. Some years earlier the Roman Catholic mission serving among the Shilluk along the White Nile had counted thirteen missionary deaths by malaria.²² One may ask how the native Shilluk were able to survive in this inhospitable environment. Apparently through generation after generation the Shilluk had developed an immunity to malarial attacks. Through advice they received and practical know-how, the personnel of the American Mission began taking systematic doses of quinine and constructing mosquito proof dwellings. These steps nearly eliminated the debilitating malarial attacks on their personnel.

Lambie felt that for the missionary doctor, prayer is at least equal in importance to sterile equipment. . . . I would as soon operate without prayer as I would without boiling my instruments or putting on rubber gloves.²³ Initially while at Doleib Hill, Lambie’s medical practice did not place heavy demands on his time, for the majority of the Shilluk believed their traditional medicine was adequate. Because he had time on his hands, he decided to begin learning the Shilluk language in earnest. His station associate, Ralph Carson, a linguist, located an old man who knew Shilluk folklore well. With Carson’s initial assistance, Lambie slowly began to catch the drift of these stories and began building a Shilluk vocabulary list. Before long he was able to converse in a limited manner with his Shilluk patients. Some six months after Lambie’s arrival, the Carson family left for home assignment. The two remaining men missed the hospitality of Mrs. Carson. During this period of loneliness, letters sent by steamer and train to the young American lady in Alexandria, Miss Charlotte Claney, grew frequent. And Lambie eagerly awaited letters of response from her.

When Rev. Elbert McCreery came to join Lambie and Tidrick, they were quickly dubbed the three monks of Doleib Hill by their American Mission colleagues. Lambie comments,

In some ways, that description applied; circumstances forced asceticism and the deprivation of feminine society upon us. Monks took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and this was our manner of life. . . . Obedience to rules of the Mission, to the Association, or to the Mission leader—especially to God—is necessary for effective work to be done. Without chastity of heart, thought, and life, no spiritual work is ever really done.²⁴

Missionary life at Doleib Hill presented challenges. Lambie was a keen observer of various insects, some helpful and others destructive. Ants belonged to the destructive category, especially in the rainy season. Precautions such as placing water in pans under the four bedposts had to be made before attempting to sleep. Ants attacked and devoured chickens, leaving only the bones. When beehives were invaded by ants, the honey was soon depleted and the bees were driven from their quarters. Termites, which looked like ants, did not attack man or animals, but they destroyed any dwelling made of wood. Even though the walls of a house might be made of brick, termites had the ability to make passageways up into the mahogany rafters and to destroy them completely. Lambie remarks, Seldom have I seen a place where there were as many termites as at our station; the whole place was infested with them. A piece of wood left on the ground one night was always half devoured in the morning.²⁵

As early as 1908, while at Doleib Hill, Lambie wrote to his mother in a prophetic manner, Our mission should push on to Abyssinia some time I believe. Only a few Bibles there and they are in great demand.²⁶

Thomas and Charlotte Lambie at Doleib Hill and Nasir stations

Adventurous experiences were never far from the young Doleib Hill doctor. One such occasion arrived at the end of 1908 when Yacoub Pasha Artin, a distinguished Egyptian official, was on an exploratory trip up the White Nile. Accompanied by the noted archeologist, A. H. Sayce, professor of Assyriology, University of Oxford, he was traveling on a new steamer. As the party neared Fashoda, just north of Malakal, the Egyptian Pasha became ill with minor cardiac arrest. Lambie was sent for at Doleib Hill and soon resuscitated him. Because the future health of the Pasha was questionable, the captain of the steamer proposed that Lambie accompany the expedition all the way to Central Africa and back so that he could care for the Pasha’s medical needs. On the new steamer Lambie found there were two or three British officers along and a European chef who served us marvelous food. Luxury such as we had—printed menus, uniformed servants—seemed too good to be true after months at my station eating ‘Mrs. McDoddies’ dehydrated cabbage.²⁷ After the month’s cruise living in high style, Lambie found that his return to Doleib Hill to resume plain living required some adjustment. One could ask, Was this an early indication of Lambie’s itchy foot syndrome?

A saving factor about residing at the Sobat River’s inhospitable station of Doleib Hill was the dozens of lime trees and other fruit trees that the Giffens and McLaughlins had planted when they first were stationed there. These hardy fruit trees were bearing well and provided not only a healthy source of vitamin C but a cash crop as well that supplemented the missionaries’ meager allowance. Missionary colleague, Ralph Tidrick, another mighty Nimrod, provided fresh wild meat of bushbuck, gazelle, and buffalo, as well as geese and ducks. Unfortunately, while Tidrick was hunting prey favored by lions, a large male that had been wounded attacked him and badly mauled him. Before Tidrick could reach medical help in Khartoum, he died.²⁸

Skilled as a doctor, Thomas Lambie was also a passionate evangelist. Abdallah Nyidhok, a Shilluk from Doleib Hill, said of him: I was taught by Mr. Carson [Scripture translator based at Doleib Hill] but the talk did not lodge in my head, or feelings. The talk of Dr. Lambie had no quarreling—meaning that it completely convinced him.²⁹ In 1914 Abdallah was the first Shilluk to be baptized, and he credited Lambie as having a significant part in his conversion.

In 1911 the Lambies became implicated in a mission quarrel and were asked to leave Doleib Hill (Charlotte had arrived there shortly after their wedding in 1909). Lambie wrote:

Oh the sadness of Mission quarrels and friction. . . . What harm they do—the wrong spirit engendered between missionaries, the un-Christlike tempers that develop, the damage done to the natives. Lest we judge the missionaries too severely, let us remember they are in a hard position. . . . Oh the heartache and the wounds, the discouragement and despair, the magnifying of trifles into mountains, and the brooding care that come from being misunderstood."³⁰

Because of quarrels and cantankerous interpersonal relationships among the missionaries at Doleib Hill, the Lambies were assigned to Dr. McLaughlin’s medical clinic in Khartoum North. Life in the urban setting of Khartoum was a happy time for the Lambies. A new house with red tile floors was constructed for them. The experienced and godly Kelly and Grace Giffen provided uplifting fellowship. The Lambies, with baby Wallace in tow, enjoyed walks along the shaded banks of the Blue Nile. Lambie found that he had become rather attached to Doleib Hill and longed to return, but this was not to be. Still, the Lambies’ ministry in Khartoum North was short lived, for the mission leaders were keen on establishing a new outreach at Nasir, also on the Sobat River, among the Nuer people group. The new station was to be located some 200 miles upstream from Doleib Hill and about 100 miles to the west of the Abyssinian border.

It had never occurred to us that we would be considered for the new station [Nasir]. In the first place, we were happily settled in Khartoum, and the work had been growing. I had none of the manual ability Mr. McCreery had, and having been raised in the city was unacquainted with house building and farm work, accomplishments necessary for pioneering. . . . Besides there was another young doctor who had not been located. . . . Surely they would appoint him, and not uproot us from our happy home. But that is what the Missionary Association decided to do, to our great dismay. We thought of resigning from the mission.³¹

The Lambies left in 1911 for the United States. After a six-month furlough, Lambie was ready and willing to pioneer the Nasir station on the Sobat. Leaving Charlotte with newborn Anne Elizabeth (called Betty) and toddler Wallace in Philadelphia, he returned to the Sudan. There, in 1912, he joined Rev. Elbert McCreery on a small houseboat some 35 feet long and 10 feet wide on a 700-mile journey from Khartoum, up the White Nile, then up the Sobat River to Nasir. Their houseboat was no match for the current of the White Nile, so McCreery and Lambie finally made arrangements to be towed to Nasir by a large steamer. The steamer was on its way farther upstream to load Abyssinian coffee at the Gambeila trading post on the Baro River. Upon reaching Nasir in June 1912, the two missionaries for the next six months made their home on the houseboat. During that period they worked at building their houses using local materials—sticks and mud for the walls, straw for the roof.

Pok Jok, a former Nuer patient of Lambie’s from Doleib Hill, and Ayik, a Nuer who was fluent in the Shilluk language, were a great help to them in building bridges to the Nuer tribe. Both had made a commitment to Jesus as their Savior and Lord. The two men, Lambie wrote, stood shoulder to shoulder with us, and if at times they faltered and their lives were not in perfect harmony with Christian ideals, yet remember how far they had come and under what constant temptations, coming both from without and within, they groaned.³² The conversion of an African, leading to holy living, was a thing to be marveled at—especially when there was not yet a local church among the Nuer to nurture and sustain Christian spirituality. Lambie’s medical skills were put to use day after day in treating various kinds of illnesses, such as ulcers, tuberculosis, and a variety of stomach maladies. Providing meat for the half dozen boat hands who had joined the mission expedition from Khartoum was a challenge. Using a fishing hook and heavy line, they caught three-foot fish of the bullhead species. The flesh of these fish was muddy tasting but it did supplement their meagre diet. Launching the Nasir station took unusual sacrifice and commitment on the part of both Lambie and McCreery. Navigating the White Nile as well as the Sobat Rivers upstream in their small house boat had indicated their mettle, for initially it had taken ingenuity, muscle, and unsuccessful negotiations with several other larger steamers before locating one that would tow them.

During Lambie and McCreery’s construction of a permanent house at Nasir for the Lambies, misfortune struck the family. By then Charlotte and the children had arrived from the United States and were staying temporarily at Doleib Hill with Mrs. Hannah McCreery. Three-year-old Wallace playfully struck a match that ignited a flammable mosquito net. Charlotte was in another room when she heard a shriek and rushed in to snatch both Betty and Wallace from the flames. The grass thatch on the roof ignited and at great speed their home along with all their clothing, cooking utensils, food stores, and office supplies was burned, leaving only smoking remains.³³

In 1918, after six years at Nasir, Lambie could recount God’s blessings and protection upon his family.

The remarkable thing about the years at Nasir was that a person as poorly endowed and unfitted as I undoubtedly was for the work could yet be used by God to hew a Mission station out of the jungle, learn a language, and, by the grace of a loving Heavenly Father, be the means of calling precious souls out of heathen darkness. The only virtue I could claim was that I tried to be obedient to Him at whatever personal cost. Often I failed; but stumbling and falling, arising and then falling again, staggered by adverse circumstances, and weakened by malaria and dysentery and a hard climate, yet somehow we struggled on. All praise to Him who always maketh us to triumph in Christ Jesus.³⁴

The strategy of the American Mission in establishing the station at Nasir was "that it might be a step