At the time of Speer's birth, his grandfather and namesake was minister of the Presbyterian Church of Greensburg, Pa. (He was also the uncle of President Buchanan.) Speer studied medicine for a few years in addition to becoming a Presbyterian minister. His first wife died in 1847 not long after their marriage (possibly in childbirth). He left for China in December, 1848. He spent about four years as a missionary in Canton and became fluent in Cantonese. In 1852, he married Elizabeth B. Ewing in Allegheny Co., Pa. and they settled in San Francisco In 1853, he founded a mission that became the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, the oldest Asian-American Christian church in North America. He visited new Chinese immigrants and Chinese mine workers and set up a dispensary to provide care to the Chinese. He also was founder and publisher of The Oriental, a Chinese language newspaper. He was a strong advocate of establishing schools for Chinese immigrant children, however, he supported using these schools to teach Christianity.
Speer became an early supporter of Chinese immigration and opposed laws for Chinese exclusion. He offered strong economic arguments in favor of immigration, but his main focus was evangelizing. He hoped that Chinese who converted to Christianity would return to China and spread the faith.
While in Philadelphia, Speer published two large volumes. The first, The Oldest and Newest Empire: China and the United States (1870), was a massive history of China and its culture. The second was The Great Revival of 1800 (c1872). (Both are available for download from the Haithi Trust.)
Speer's stay in Powelton overlapped with the that of the Fullerton family who lived a block away at 3307 Hamilton St. They had been medical missionaries in India during the time Speer was in China. One can only imagine what experiences they shared with each other about their time as early American missionaries in two great, but very different, cultures..
