Mookerjees--First Indian Family to Join the Adventists

 




(1) A Grandfather Wall Clock Owned by the Mookerjees.  Given to Pastor W G Jenson by N G Mookerjee and passed on to Gordon Christo. Now in the Heritage Centre.  Estimated to be about 90 years old.

(2) A Steel Mirror and Its Cloth Pouch. Used by N G Mookerjee on his travels and given by his wife to my mother Mrs G J Christo. See the reflection of the pencil sharpener.

    Later Corrections [made on June 19, 2020]. 
1. I have been informed by descendants of the Mookerjee family that Lal Chand was not the son of Krishna Pal's daughter, but of a second wife of Bhyrub Mookerjee. Therrefore LGM only mentions that he is a descendant of  Carey's first Brahmin convert (Bhyrub)
2. The manuscript mailed to my father which had no name was erroneously attributed to J O Wilson by my dad. It is by E M Meleen.
3.According to the obituary of Noni Gopal Mookerjee he was born on Oct 29, 1900. He would not have been born when the family became Adventists in 1896-97 as a result of the treatment of Noppo Gopal the second son. Noni would have been 28 when he was baptized, 44 when he was married and 60 when he was posted in Goa, and 80 at the timeof his death However, according to his own handwritten account, he was born on Jan 28, 1894, he was in fact the boy who was treated in 1896-7 when the family joined the church. If this is correct, then he was baptized at the age of 44, married at the age of 60, and died a day after his 97th birthday.

Lal Chand Mookerjee

Grandfather Mookerjee was the grandson of Krishna Pal, a carpenter who in his thirties became William Carey's first convert when he went to the missionaries with a broken arm for treatment.

[We know the names of Krishna Pal's four daughters born to him by his wife Rasoo (the second woman to be baptized, after her sister Jeyamoni) from The Memoirs of Krishna Pal, and The Life of William Carey DD--Shoemaker and Missionary by George Smith, and From Krishna Pal to Lal Behari Dey: Indian Builders of the Church in India or Native Agency in Bengal 1800-1880 by E Jackson]

The first daughter Golook had been betrothed as an infant to Mohun, a Hindu who came to claim her when she came of age. The second daughter Ananda married the first converted Brahmin, Krishna Prasad. The third Kesaree married Bhyrub (Bhairab) Chandra Mookhpadya another Brahmin whose last name was anglicized to Mookerjee. The last Neelu married Raju a school teacher.

Bhyrub and Kesaree had a son Lal Chand who married Prosonnomoyee in 1854. The first of six sons was Akshay Coomar whose three sons were Lal Gopal, Noppo Gopal and Noni Gopal.
The Adventists refereed to Lal Chand as Grandfather Mookerjee. He accepted the message from literature supplied by his son A C Mookerjee. (See  J E Fulton, “An Early Indian Believer,” Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 98, Oct 6, 1921: 9 (http://documents.adventistarchives.org/Periodicals/RH/RH19211006-V98-40.pdf) and invited the Adventists to hold meetings at his home too. There is a picture of Grandfather Mookerjee at an outdoor pulpit at his home in the above article.



Noni Gopal informs us that the Mookerjees had for centuries been priests of the Kali Temple in Serampur and that for a while Bhyrub had assisted William Carey in translation of the Bible into Bengali.

Akshay Coomar Mookerjee

Father A C Mookerjee accepted the message in 1896, introduced by Colporteur Ellery Robinson who arrived in India on Oct 12, 1896 (See Ellery Robinson, “India,” Supplement to Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 73, Dec 1, 1896: 3). Ellery visited the Mookerjees who lived in the vicinity of Sealdah station close to the 154 Bow Bazar headquarters of the Adventists.  In three weekly visits to A C Mookerjee, Ellery sold Patriarchs and Prophets, The Great Controversy, and Thoughts on Daniel and Revelation. Father Mookerjee translated these into Bengali for family worship every evening day.  A C Mookerjee translated and printed Adventist tracts in Bengali at his own expense (L G Mookerjee, “A Comprehensive Survey of the Early Work,” Eastern Tidings—Pioneer Number Extra, 36-9, May 8, 1941:7) in his own printing press in Baitakhana (W A Spicer, "Some Facts About the Early Work in India," Eastern Tidings--Pioneer Number Extra, 36-9, May 8, 1941:6)

Lal Gopal Mookerjee

Born in 1882, and having joined the Adventists in 1896 with his father Lal Gopal Mookerjee worked at the Sanitarium and Health Foods Company from 1901-1903, and then at the treatment rooms till 1905. Meanwhile on Feb 9, 1904 he married Grace Kellogg who had come to work as a self-supporting nurse in 1903. Grace (no relation to Dr J H Kellogg), was the cousin of Louis Kellogg, former mayor of Rippon and a senator from Wisconsin. 

When the first church was organised in Calcutta in 1908, Lal Gopal was ordained as an elder--the first Indian to be ordained so. The couple worked in East Bengal establishing the work in Gopalganj till Grace suffered attacks from tropical illnesses and they moved to the US where Lal Gopal studied at the Washington Adventist Seminary while Grace recuperated. The couple returned to East Bengal where Grace Kellogg succumbed to cerebral meningitis in 1910.  

In 1911 LGM  married Clara Loveday and they started a boarding section at Gopalgunj. Lal Gopal was ordained to the gospel ministry on  June 24, 1917. When he joined administrative work of the East Bengal mission, Clara ran the school till 1926 putting in much of family funds. They also started another school in Jarlipar. Then Lal Gopal was called to be president of the entire Bengal Section. From 1931-1934 Lal Gopal taught in the South India Training School at Bangalore. In 1937 he was called to take charge of the the Northeast Training School at Karmatar (which was later moved to Babumohal and then to Falakata). From 1940-1946 he served as Home Missionary, Sabbath School, and YPMV secretary for the Northeast India Union in headquartered in Ranchi. Returning from the 1946 GC session, he worked at the Voice of Prophecy School in Poona, and from 1948 till his retirement in 1950 he worked as Director of the Religious Liberty and Temperance departments of the Southern Asia Division. (See Obituary of L G Mookerjee in Tidings 47-10, May 15, 1952; and Gordon Christo “Taking Root—The First Indigenous Pastors, Tidings,  1910 Heritage Special Issue, Nov 2010, pp 21-23).  Lal Gopal had a son Marcus who settled in the US.

Noppo Gopal Mookerjee
ACM's younger son, Noppo Gopal Mookerjee at this time was suffering from a malignant form of malaria and ACM instructed a servant to call for Dr L V Mitter, the family Hindu physician.  The servant made a mistake and called for N Mitter, a Bengali Christian assisting Dr O G Place at the newly opened Treatment Room in 154 Bow Bazar street, and whom also the Mookerjees were acquainted with.  On friday the young Noppo Gopal was taken to the treatment room and in the evening while leaving Father Mookerjee heard the sound of hymn singing upstairs. He attended the vespers service and eventually the whole family joined the Adventists. (L G Mookerjee, Personal Letter, Feb 25, 1951, quoted in J O Wilson, untitled, mss, 99-100. The mss typed on onion skin paper was mailed by Gertrude Ayala to my father G J Christo in 2013.  Chapter VII is titled “Beginnings of the Work and Half a Century of Progress.”  The author does not name himself, but based on a few facts supplied about himself, my father was able to deduce who he was. The mss dated in the 1950s was intended for publication but too much work remained.) Not much more is known about Noppo.

Noney (Noni) Gopal Mookerjee

Born on Oct 29,1900 after the family had already joined the Adventists Noney left his successful insurance business in 1928 to join the Adventist task force first as an evangelistic assistant in Calcutta. Following some work in Karmatar, N G Mookerjee served as principal of the Kellogg Mookerjee school (named after his sister-in-law) in East Bengal.  In 1944 he married Norine Dowman and was transferred to Ranchi.

While pastoring in Calcutta Noney was ordained in 1947.  The next year he was moved to Poona where he served first as Business Manager and then as Field Secretary of the Voice of Prophecy School. In between he briefly served as a pastor in Krishnarajapuram (Bangalore). In 1960 the Mookerjees entered Goa as pioneers and served there till his retirement in 1966 whereupon they moved back to Ranchi.  N G Mookerjee passed away on Jan 29, 1981—one of the last links to the pioneers of Adventism in India (See the Obituary of N G Mookerjee in Tidings 76, Mar 1981.)