Foster Paul Stockwell was born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma on February 17, 1929.
He was the son of Francis Olin and Esther Stockwell, two Methodist missionaries who went to Fuzhou, Fujian, in 1929 then to Chengdu, Sichuan, in 1939.
[1][2] His father, Olin Stockwell, spent two years in prison in the town of Chongqing as a suspected spy just after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and wrote a book about it: With God in Red China.
[4] Foster Stockwell was the author of books dealing with subjects as diverse as religion in China, information storage and retrieval, American communes, the exploration of China, genealogical research, misinterpretations of the Bible.
[7] Foster Stockwell was an editor for two major encyclopedias, a newspaper editor (Berrien County Record, Buchanan, Michigan, 1960–61),[8] and a publishing consultant for Chinese publishers and authors.