John Thomas Meskill 91 of Yarmouth Port died Sunday December 18, 2016 at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis.

John grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Quincy. He was the oldest of four children born to Thomas and Mary (Marshall) Meskill and he had three sisters, Jeanne, Mary, and Sue.

After graduating from North Quincy High School, John was admitted to Harvard College. His studies were interrupted by his enlistment in the Navy, which set the course for the rest of his professional life. It was in the Navy’s Japanese Language Program that John first developed his fascination with East Asia. After graduating from Harvard College in 1946, John pursued doctoral studies in Chinese history at Columbia University. From 1958 to his retirement in 1985, he was a professor of Chinese history at Barnard College and Columbia University, becoming a leading specialist in the Ming Dynasty.

He married his first wife, Jane, in 1949. In 1958 and 1959, two daughters, Susan and Margaret, were born. He married his second wife, Johanna, in 1965, with whom he had a son, David, in 1966. In 1992, John married Irene Liu, a faculty member in Columbia’s Chinese Language program. Irene would become the love of his life. With her, John enjoyed the happiest period of his life, which lasted until her death in 2015.

John could be witty and charming and valued elegance in art, language, and people. He was an avid bicyclist, riding across the George Washington Bridge every day to and from Barnard College in the 1970s and 1980s. He continued biking into his 80s. He was also passionate about gardening, a hobby that took off after he and Irene moved in 1999 to a home in Cotuit. John always loved the Cape, where his parents had taken the family on summer holidays and where he had spent many of his long summers as a professor.

As long as their health held up, John and Irene also traveled extensively. The more colorful and historic the location the better. They welcomed their children and grandchildren to sumptuous Chinese meals at their home. They would operate almost as one unit as they were preparing food, all the time keeping up a steady dialog in Mandarin. It was just one of the remarkable features of their relationship that John and Irene each took a great interest in the other’s children and grandchildren and helped foster close ties between the two sets of offspring.

John is survived by his three children, Susan, Margaret, and David; five grandchildren, Nicholas, Katherine, Myles, Sammy, and Lucy; three step-children, Tessie, David, and Marc; and nine step-grandchildren, An-Lin, Zora, Devon, Kaitlyn, Jana, Eric, Dana, Brian, and Evan.

Funeral services will be private.

As an expression of sympathy, memorial donations may be made to the ACLU, c/o the Gift Processing Department, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004, aclu.org.

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