Guide to the Langdon Cheves McCord Smythe and Mary Fletcher Smythe Papers

The Smythes were Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (PCUS) missionaries to Japan from 1917 to 1939 and from 1947 to 1957. Langdon Cheves McCord Smythe, or “Cheves” as he was known to family and friends, was born February 7, 1883, scion of an established Charleston, S.C. family. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.), in 1904 and 1905, then spent four years as a schoolmaster in Charleston. Langdon completed a bachelor’s in Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1912, and spent the next year on a fellowship to Heidelberg University. Appointed a PCUS evangelistic missionary to Japan, he sailed for language school in Tokyo in October 1913.

Mary Fletcher was born in 1890 in Accomac, Va., and graduated from Mary Baldwin College (Staunton, Va.) in 1907. Langdon met Mary in Karuizawa, Nagano prefecture, in 1914, and they married in 1916. The Smythes served in Toyohashi, Aichi prefecture, before transferring to Kinjo Gakuin in Nagoya in 1917. Both Smythes taught classes at Kinjo and assisted with mission work in the community. Mary specialized in music and home economics classes while Langdon taught English and Bible, worked with several Nagoya churches, and went on evangelistic tours in the countryside.

In October 1918, the YMCA of Japan recruited Langdon to work in Siberia, serving as unofficial liaison and interpreter -- he spoke Japanese, German, and some Russian and French -- for prisoners of war. The Smythes taught at Kinjo from 1922 to 1939, when the creeping nationalism of Japan’s government and the enforcement of wartime restrictions led the couple to consider resigning. Ultimately, Langdon’s ill health forced the couple to return to the United States, in 1939; he died in February 1941.

In 1947, Mary returned to Nagoya where she taught at Kinjo Gakuin and helped with informal relief work among Japanese affected by World War II. She was much revered at Kinjo and in the larger community when she retired in 1957.