Note: N730 At the urging of his brother Calvin, John Lowrie Mateer studied printing, lithographing, and other publication processes in order to take charge of the Presbyterian Press at Shanghai, China. He served in China from 1872 until his health broke down in 1876. Then he returned to the States and bought a farm in northwest Missouri. After his marriage in 1879, John continued farming for about two years. From 1883 until 1885 he was in Front Royal, Virginia, where he engaged in the manufacture of molasses 'from sorghum by means of sulfurous acid.' Then he spent two years in Onargo, Illinois, in the hardware business with his brother Will, and six years selling sewing machines in Burlington, Iowa. When his wife died in 1893 after a long bout with consumption, John L. was himself just recovering from typhoid fever. Weak, exhausted and miserably discouraged by a succession of commercial misadventures, he was neverless firmly convinced 'that God had for me yet some special work to do for Him.' After a year spent in visiting family and friends across the country, John, with his second wife, returned to China to take over the management of the American Board Press in Peking, where he died just a few weeks before the Boxer Rebellion.
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