Isaac Taylor Headland

Isaac Taylor Headland (1859–1942) was born in Freedom, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Mount Union College in 1888 before going to Peking in 1890 as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, where he taught science at Peking University. In 1894 he married Marian Sinclair, a physician whose practice among the aristocratic families of the capital gave the couple entry to court circles that included relatives of the Empress Dowager Cixi. Drawing on that access, he wrote The Chinese Boy and Girl, Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, and Court Life in China (1909), his account of the Qing court's officials, ladies, and customs. He died in 1942.