An August 1879 article in the Cambridge Chronicle announced that “there was a written agreement dated Shanghai, 26th of May, ’79, between [Francis] Knight, on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and Ko Kum Huo, to teach the Chinese language at Harvard College for three years, at a salary of $200 a month.”
By mid-September, the professor was getting settled in Cambridge, but had not yet begun teaching; at the end of that month, Ko was confirmed officially to a term of three years by the Harvard Overseers. Ko’s presence in Cambridge was both a curiosity and a sign of Harvard’s increasing awareness of the place China was to occupy on the world stage and, in turn, the importance of offering its students the opportunity to engage with the country’s politics, economy and culture.
Ko and his family moved into a house on Frisbie Place, formerly the home of another Harvard professor, and he began teaching in October 1879. The Chronicle noted that Ko would be teaching with the help of an English interpreter, and that “the course is open to any member of the university who is approved by the faculty, and to any not members, except women, on payment of $150.” Who was Harvard anticipating would be taking Ko’s courses, and why would they need to study Chinese?
We do not have a full accounting of all of Ko’s students, but the newspapers reported that a number were Christian missionaries preparing to go to China. Some, too, were current or prospective businesspeople looking to learn the language in preparation for a more open market with Asia that was on the horizon. In addition to his language courses, Ko studied and wrote poetry, and part of his personal mission in Cambridge was to introduce the literature of what the Chronicle called “the Celestial Kingdom” to those at Harvard and beyond.
Upon his arrival, Ko wasted no time in acquainting himself with many of the people and organizations in the area. The Chronicle reported on numerous occasions that Ko, often in the company of other Harvard professors, visited the Geldowsky furniture factory in East Cambridge, the Perkins School for the Blind (then in Boston), the Grand Army Fair, Shepherd Memorial Church and more. “The Chinese professor at Harvard is very fond of society. He has been to many private entertainments this winter, and apparently enjoys them all,” a February 1880 article noted.
Ko’s family, too, was of great interest to Cantabrigians; the papers reported on his wife’s and eldest daughter’s beauty, and announced the birth of the Kos’ fifth child, a boy, born in Cambridge in December 1880.
Ko Kum Huo died in February 1882, just shy of the completion of his three-year term at Harvard. His funeral was held in the Appleton Chapel, presided over by the dean of the Divinity School, who read selections from Confucius and the New Testament. Ko’s body was prepared for transport to China, where he would be buried, and his widow and children returned to their home country.
During his tenure at Harvard, Ko’s classes did not attract as many students as the college had anticipated, either in language studies or in literature, but his presence in and around Cambridge garnered much attention and served as an introduction for many to the Chinese culture. For almost all Cantabrigians, their only knowledge of the Chinese experience came from newspaper reports – mostly coming from the West Coast – of Chinese immigrants who were arriving in large numbers as workers on what was by then a transcontinental railroad system. The very few Chinese immigrants who had made the Cambridge area their home worked mostly in local laundries; extremely limited employment options for these arrivals in many cities had led to their concentration in niche industries such as laundromats. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 greatly curtailed the number of Chinese coming to the United States, as American industries feared competition from cheap labor facilitated by brokers who would agree to pay for passage and initial room and board for Chinese workers in exchange for a significant portion of their meager salaries once they arrived.
During his relatively brief time in Cambridge, Ko was in many ways an anomaly, rousing the interest of the local population and providing the scantest of introductions to Chinese culture. But his presence at Harvard served as an important counterpoint to what Cantabrigians were otherwise reading and hearing about misunderstood and maligned Chinese immigrants. In Ko, residents of Cambridge were able to meet an extremely bright and learned scholar and family man who was extremely curious about and engaged with the people and organizations around him and helped to broaden their view of the possibilities for engagement with the small but vital Chinese community that called Cambridge home at the end of the 19th century.
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