Of lions, legends, and love

Myron with Africans, wife Adda and daughter Anna
Northern Rhodesia, circa 1925

His nickname was “Sia ku yasa mu liso,” meaning “the person who shoots (literally who spears) in the eye.”  Known for his legendary courage in tracking lions--those that preyed on local cattle--and his accuracy with a gun, Myron Taylor died on September 16, 1931, days after being mauled by a lion...”a victim of his own fearlessness and self confidence,” wrote a fellow missionary.

I’ve been considering Myron’s life on this 85th anniversary of his death, and seeing some small parallels in our lives.  I too went off to Africa as a young adult, moved by faith, with a sense of calling, and ready for adventure.  I’m less impulsive than Myron appears to have been, and my 64 years now give me a little more life experience than he, who died at 58.  But like him, my self confidence has perhaps not always served me well. 

Enjoying Victoria Falls, 1976

With students and colleague Mary Biser (L)
Macha Mission Nurse Training School, 1978

H. Frances Davidson (L) and Adda G. Engle, founders of Macha Mission

Linked to Myron through his wife Adda Engle, a first cousin to my great-grandfather, I lived and worked in the late 1970s where the couple first met--at Macha Mission in Zambia.  Adda Engle and colleague Frances Davidson founded the mission a year prior to Myron’s 1907 arrival in what was then Northern Rhodesia.  The two women had trekked 485 miles through the African bush, in spite of those who tried to discourage and block their venture.  “Their tenacity earned them respect and reluctant assistance,” said a beneficiary of the mission.

Map from Davidson's 1915 book, South and South Central Africa

Davidson called Myron the "long-looked-for-co-laborer."  He hunted game to provide meat for the growing mission population (a school had been started) and made bricks for building permanent, ant-proof houses.  It soon became clear, however, that Myron’s passion was outreach, and his departures on evangelistic journeys were often abrupt and sometimes ill considered, according to Davidson.  He traveled in the rainy season and suffered repeated bouts of malaria, coming close to death at one point.  

Within two years of Myron’s arrival, he and Adda were married.  Davidson wrote in her journal: "I am sorry to be separated from Sister Engle…as I have enjoyed her association as much as that of her intended has been a trial to me."  The newlyweds soon sensed a call to a new area, and they persevered through numerous setbacks and trials toward their goal.  

Mission house at Sikalongo

The Zambian Brethren in Christ Church celebrated, last month, the 100 year anniversary of the mission founded by Adda and Myron.  Sikalongo Mission brought education and health care to the Tonga people, along with the Gospel.  One of Zambia’s leaders in the struggle for independence from Great Britain was educated and nurtured at Sikalongo.

My own "native stool" acquired in Tongaland

The Reverend Peter Munsaka and Arthur Kutwayo of Sikalongo said this of Myron:  He “...sat on the native stools or on the same bench with local people.  He was among very few white people who prepared a ‘sit’ for the local people inside his house.  In most cases natives were to be met outside the house and spoken to there.”

What made Myron different?  Perhaps his own humble beginnings?  I interviewed the Taylor’s daughter Anna Taylor Grissinger in 2004 (aged 91, with a keen memory) and she shared this family history:

Myron, who grew up in the backwoods of Michigan and had an 8^th grade education, was the great grandson of a English general.  The general's son took passage to the former colonies, settled in Detroit, married an American, and was disowned by his aristocratic family.  The young couple died in an influenza epidemic, and the general never came to know his grandson George.  

George Taylor fell in love with Sophia Neff, a young girl whose life with a alcoholic father prompted her to ask her husband to live where no alcohol was available.  So off to rural Michigan they went to raise a family of four.  The family met neighbors of the Brethren in Christ persuasion, and red-haired Myron, nicknamed Flammable, joined the local fellowship and soon learned of the church's new venture in the Rhodesias.  

Myron and Adda Engle Taylor with Anna (L) and Ruth

Myron experienced God's call to Africa in his late twenties, and spent the next several years preparing for mission work.  He made his way from Boston to Liverpool on a cattle ship, his berth in exchange for feeding and caring for the livestock.  He traveled from Liverpool to Cape Town by regular steamer and was soon headed to the African interior--to his mate, his work, his destiny.

Anna (L) and Ruth with their mother Adda

I wrote more about the Taylor family’s life in Africa, and about Myron’s death and its aftermath in the April 2016 edition of Brethren in Christ History & Life (bic-history.org Through the Eyes of a Child).   Though I’m a gatherer rather than a hunter, the eulogy at Myron’s death is worthy of aspiration, whatever blunders I may make on this earthly journey.

Physically, he hunted and brought us meat.

Spiritually, he hunted and brought us to God.

Please God, receive him in our tradition,

For he lived with us and loved us.

Black and white photos courtesy of Brethren in Christ Historical Library and Archives
Info on Myron's nickname from "Memories" by David E. Climenhaga 
Quotes and eulogy from Anabaptist Songs in African Hearts: A Global Mennonite History by John Lapp