A MOVING story has been told about a missionary from St Davids who was among thousands of Christian’s beheaded in China during the Boxer Rebellion.

Elizabeth Dixon travelled to the Far East with her husband Herbert during the last decade of the 19th century.

The couple had four children, which they decided to leave in Britain in the care of guardians.

Disaster struck in 1990, when The Empress Cixi decreed that all foreigners must be executed. An army of men dubbed the Boxers were soon hunting the couple along with the many other European missionary families who had settled there.

In October 2006 their great-granddaughter Prudence Bell set out on a 8,000 mile journey to find the spot where Herbert and Elizabeth were buried.

She knew they were missionaries in China, and that they died there, but it was only when she opened a black tin box which had been in her family for more than a100 years that she discovered the harrowing details of what happened to them.

Her journey has resulted in the book Lives from a Black Tin Box, which will be launched at Oriel y Parc in St Davids on Friday, October 24 at 3pm.

It is based on a journal and letters written by Herbert and Elizabeth. It traces their early lives in Wales and London, their marriage and the move to China, and the final, desperate weeks of their life on the run, hiding in caves in a bid to escape their would-be assassins.

Prudence said: “I can remember crying when I first read my great-grandfather’s journal.

“There’s one page, separate from the rest, which is almost like a letter to his four children. It reads: “My dear Benny, Charlie, Mary and Ridley - Mother and I are in grave danger of being killed and are having to hide. Should the soldiers find us I don’t know what will become of us… If we live you shall hear all about it. If we die, we will meet later on in heaven.”

It was signed “Your affectionate father, Herbert Dixon.