John Törnquist

Who was John Törnquist?

John Törnquist was a Swedish missionary. He served with the Swedish Missionary Society in Chinese Turkestan.

Törnquist first arrived in Eastern Turkestan on 24 September 1904 and married Ellen Rosén on 15 May 1906. They lost their daughter, Ester Karin, age 1, in Kashgar on 6 January 1911.

Törnquist was the longest serving missionary of the Swedish Missionary Society in Chinese Turkestan. For long periods he was the only one in the field working specifically among the Chinese. The Xinjiang missionaries from Sweden who worked among Chinese weren't very many. Most of them worked among the Uyghurs. Albert Andersson and his wife worked among the Chinese from 1903 to 1912, Carl Persson in the 1920s, Ellen Törnquist from 1905 to 1923, Sigrid Larsson during the late 1920s. John Törnquist served from 1904 to 1937.

In 1924 John Törnquist wrote the following to Mr. Nyren, the Mission Director: "Of the 35 missionaries that have been working here so far, only three men and one woman have been fluent in the Chinese language. Out of the 22 years that the Chinese Mission has been in existence, I have been the only missionary to the Chinese for ten years."