Nathan Brewer was born in the State of Massachusetts in 1891. His mother was a Seventh-day Adventist and desired him to grow up and become a worker for God. So when he finished grade school he went to South Lancaster Academy. He graduated from Atlantic Union College in 1916. It was there he married Mae Wheeler, a girl from Vermont. Her father was a Baptist minister. He died when Mae was 12 years old.

In 1916 the General Conference invited them to go to China. Just before they were to sail, Mae came down with chicken pox. On the train to San Francisco she was forced to cover her face with a newspaper and hide her head with a veil.

In 1915 the workers in the Asiatic Division sent a special request to the Mission Board calling for 35 or more missionaries and for $100,000 in funds, in response to which the largest group of Seventh-day Adventist missionaries sent out up to that time sailed for the Orient, many of them destined for China, bringing a new impetus to the work.

Also the first subscription book published by the Signs Press in Shanghai was finished in 1916. And it was reported that over 200 new converts were added in the South China Mission. It was a great thrill to the early pioneers at that time.

So when Nathan and Mae Brewer arrived he was given the position in the Anhwei Mission as Publishing and Home Missionary Secretary. Later he held these positions in the Shandung and South Kiangsu missions until 1929.

Later he was president of the Central China Union, Manchuria and East China Union missions. In 1940 he became president of the China Division. While visiting Hong Kong in 1942 he was interned, but was repatriated about six months later. He returned to the United States and served as a General Conference Field Secretary until the end of World War II. He was then appointed General Secretary of the China Division from 1946 to 1948. At that time the China Division was staffed with Chinese leaders and all American workers left China by 1951.

He again served the General Conference as Field Secretary and during the last three years of his life was in charge of the Personnel Department. In 1959 he was with a group of his family on a trip when they had a severe automobile accident. He and several others were killed.

Nathan and Mae had two daughters, Carol and Marjorie, born while they were in China. Carol married Richard Nelson, M.D., and went to Japan to follow in her father’s footsteps of service.