Teachers and Preachers, Sialkot, Pakistan, ca.1900

“Sialkot District teachers and preachers.” Group portrait of large number of indigenous men. Seated in the middle is one European man. ❧ Sialkot was a frontier military station, having been annexed by the British in 1849, situated on the fertile plains at the base of the Himalayan range by the Chenab River. When the Church of Scotland chose it as the base for their missionary work in the Punjab in 1857, they sent Thomas Hunter (1827-1857) who was murdered with his family during the Indian Mutiny that same year. His successors, John Taylor (1837-1868) and Robert Paterson, would not arrive in Sialkot until 1860 and rapidly expand the field. The mission would open orphanages, girl’s schools, women’s hospitals and do zenana work in Sialkot and throughout the Punjab. Native evangelists were often at the forefront of the mission expansion and also part of the original group establishing the fiel