Elise Chung Lyon was born in Stawell, Australia, about one hundred forty miles from Melbourne. She first come to the United States in 1923 from China with her husband Bayard Lyon. They lived in Elkhorn, Wisconsin with their three children, Marguerite, Hugh, and David. Her brother Fred Mowfung Chung also lived in Elkhorn.
Elsie’s exempt status was “wife of citizen, admitted to U.S. prior to July 1, 1924.” She had reentry permits from 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, and 1934, each with her photograph attached. When she arrived in 1934, she was forty-seven years old. Her file does not have much personal information. Elsie’s 1929 Form 505, Certificate of Admission of Alien, lists her occupation as lecturer.
Elsie’s file does record a confusing incident with immigration authorities upon her arrival in Seattle from China via Vancouver, B.C. on Saturday, 10 November 1928. She was returning from a three-month tour of China. Mrs. Lyon, a lecturer on international relations, and nine other Chinese passengers were threatened with being locked up by immigration authorities for the weekend. David Young, a representative of the Seattle Chinese consulate, managed to get Mrs. Lyon released to his custody as a matter of courtesy.
A 13 November 1928 newspaper article titled, “Chinese Wife of American is Held Here”1 is included in her file. The article quoted Elsie Chung Lyon, “I’m rather sorry now that I did not suffer myself to be locked up because I would be better able to understand the indignation my countrymen feel on entering this country.” She noted that her papers were in order and she had been admitted two times previously without a problem. She promised that she would take the matter up with Secretary Kellogg in Washington, D.C. [Frank Billings Kellogg served in the U.S. Senate and as U.S. Secretary of State.] The article or the 1928 forms in her file do not say exactly why Lyon was being held or what happened to the other Chinese passengers.
In September 1929, Mr. J. J. Forster, Steamship General Passenger Agent of Vancouver, British Columbia wrote a letter to Mr. Luther Weedin, Commissioner of the U.S. Department of labor in Seattle concerning a compliant of Mrs. Elsie Chung Lyon about the ports of entry for readmittance to the United States. Mrs. Lyon was complaining that she had not been told the requirements covering her entry. Forster explained:
1. All Chinese ports of entry are not advised when return permits are issued.
2. The Vancouver office did not know where the permit was issued or which port she departed to China from.
3. Chinese with return permits are entitled to admission to the U.S. through any port designated as a port of admission for Chinese.
Rules of October 1, 1926, governing the admission of Chinese gives the following on Ports on Entry:
“No Chinese person, other than a Chinese diplomatic or consular officer, shall be permitted to enter the United States at any seaport other than at the ports of Port Townsend or Seattle, Wash.; Portland, Oreg.; San Francisco, San Pedro, or San Diego, Calif; New Orleans, La.; New York, N.Y.; Boston, Mass.; San Juan or Ponce, P.R.; and Honolulu, Hawaii.”
According to her file, Elsie Chung Lyon continued traveling without any problems. The last entry notes that she left from San Francisco on 19 October 1936. “See Imm. File 117/9/36.”
Other information not included in the file:
On 12 September 1947, Elsie Chung Lyon’s letter to The New York Times criticizing General Wedemeyer’s statement on China was published. Lyon had recently worked seventeen months with the Chinese Nationalist Army in China and thought she was more able than Wedemeyer to evaluate the miserable and dehumanizing condition of the Chinese people and their need for honest leadership. She did not want America to continue “to grant aid to the present tyrannical regime…”
Death Information and Obituary for Elsie Chung Lyon:
Elsie Chung Lyon, the daughter of Mow Fun Chung and Mow Fung Huishe of China, was born in Australia in 1887. She died at Fort Worth, Texas on 16 Dec 1963 at age 76 years.2
Elsie graduated as a registered nurse from London School of Nursing and Medical Administration in England and was a registered nurse at the American Bureau for Medical Aid to China. She served as a lieutenant colonel in the Nationalist Chinese Army during World War II. After her return to the U.S., she translated English language nursing texts into Chinese. Her translation of Midwifery for Nurses (Hu shi jie chan xu zhi ) by Henry Russell is listed in the National Institutes of Health library catalog.3
Elsie Chung Lyon became a U.S. citizen in 1947. She was survived by a son David in Missouri, a son Hugh in Virginia and a daughter, Mrs. Margaret McHarg of Bellevue, Washington.4
[This file is the combined effort of the Chinese Exclusion Act Indexing team at the National Archives at Seattle. Rhonda Farrer indexed the file. She was intrigued by the story and shared it with Joyce Liu. Joyce found the NYT’s article. They gave me a copy of their findings. From there I obtained Elsie’s death certificate and obituary and wrote it up for the blog. THN]
- Alice Elinor, “Chinese Wife of American is Held Here” Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle, WA, p3. ↩︎
- Elsie Chung Lyon, 16 Dec 1963, Texas Department of State Health Services; Austin Texas, USA; Texas Death Certificates, 1903–1982, Ancestry.com ↩︎
- Henry Russell Andrews, Hu shi jie chan xu zhi [Midwifery for nurses], (Shanghai : Guang 1941), National Library of Medicine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/101541743. ↩︎
- “Native of China: Pioneer in Nursing Dies Here,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas, 17 Dec 1963, p.32. Newspapers.com ↩︎