Tamsui Oxford College

A red brick missionary school completed in 1882 by Canadian Presbyterian minister George Leslie Mackay, who had arrived in Tamsui. The English name honors Oxford County, Ontario, where the bulk of the donations were collected, while the Chinese name alludes to the broad curriculum of theology, humanities, natural sciences, and medicine taught here. Two years later Mackay founded the adjoining Tamsui Girls’ School (淡水女學堂), the first formal girls’ school anywhere in Taiwan. After Mackay’s death in 1901 the institution was reorganized as a seminary that eventually relocated to Taipei in 1914, and the building today serves as a museum on the campus of Aletheia University (真理大學).