John Cornelius Stam (January 18, 1907 – December 8, 1934) and Elisabeth Alden "Betty" Stam (née Scott; February 22, 1906[1] – December 8, 1934) were American Christian missionaries to China, with the China Inland Mission (CIM), during the Chinese Civil War.
[2] Betty Stam grew up in Tsingtao (today called Qingdao), a city on the east coast of China, where her father, Charles Scott, was a missionary.
[4] In November 1934, John and Betty moved to their mission station at Tsingteh[5] (now Jingde) in Anhui Province with their three-month-old daughter, Helen.
However, the Communists quickly overran the city, came to where the Stams were staying and broke open the gates to the compound.
In the midst of hustle and bustle, Helen started crying, and a soldier suggested that they kill her, since she was only bothering them.
The group stopped for a night and Betty was allowed to tend to Helen, but in fact, she hid her daughter in the room inside a sleeping bag.
[11] The Stams' daughter later came to the United States and was raised by her aunt and uncle, George and Helen Mahy.
John and Betty Stam's bodies were found by a small group of Christians, and they buried them on a hillside.
Philippians 1:21 December 8, 1934, Miaosheo, Anhui, "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life."
The Red Army's 19th Division, under commander Xun Huaizhou [zh] and political commissar Nie Rongzhen, passed through the town of Tsingteh on December 6, 1934, where they captured the Stams.
The 10th Army Group was defeated on December 14 by a brigade from the Nationalist force, and commander Xun was killed in that battle.