Conversation with Nora Evans Buys (92.5 years old)
Los Altos, California
August 10, 2018
Present: Kathy Vorwerk (niece), Janet Evans (niece), Marian Vorwerk Eichner (niece), Richard Buys (son),
Barbara Buys (daughter)
• Nora's father, Richard Taylor Evans, was born on April 27, 1885 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
• Richard Taylor Evans died on December 22, 1940 in Tientsin, China (heart attack).
o He and Marian had come home from a party.
o He was buried in Tientsin.
• His undergraduate degree and law degree were from Harvard University.
o Richard wanted to go to medical school, but his poor eyesight kept him from doing that.
• The Dean of Harvard (law school) received a letter from the Imperial University in Tientsin asking for
someone to begin an international law school.
o There were concession territories in Tientsin ceded by the Chinese Qing dynasty to a number
of European countries, the United States and Japan. The concessions were not governed by
Chinese law, they were governed by the laws of the country they represented.
• The Dean asked Richard if he wanted to go to Tientsin to start the school. Richard said that he didn't
know international law. The Dean said "don't worry, they don't either".
• Richard went to China in 1909.
o A special interest in China did not bring him there, rather it was his interest was in helping
start the law school.
o He helped start the international law school, and taught law and English there.
• Richard had poor eyesight (legally blind).
o His mother, Grandma Molly, was exposed to German measles while she was pregnant with
Richard (during the 1st trimester). This caused him to be born with scattered cataracts.
o When he was young people thought he wasn't bright, that he might be intellectually impaired
because he walked into things and kept falling down. They found it was because he could not
see.
o Doctor cut a triangle in the lens of his left eye when he was 3 or 4 years old, this allowed him
to see a little, but he was still considered legally blind.
o To read, he had to hold books up close to his left eye.
o His inability to see impacted his life, but did not stop him from achieving a lot, he was a smart,
strong person.
▪ He remembered what he read.
▪ He could not drive, but he studied maps and remembered them and could use that
memory to visualize where he was.
▪ He helped plan family trips.
▪ He knew history.
▪ He was friendly, outgoing, loving, and companionate.
▪ He had a big heart and did things for others.
▪ He opened their home in Tientsin to missionaries and others.
▪ He built "vacation homes" in Peitaiho (new spelling Beidaihe) for missionaries and
others in need of rest.
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• Peitaiho is a coastal resort town on northeast China's Bohai Sea.
▪ After WWI he worked with the Red Cross (1918/early 20s).
▪ In the 1930's he helped people (White Russians, Jews) get out of China (Hazel Lynn)
before the Japanese War.
• Richard's parents, George Evans and Molly O'Toole, were different religions. Molly was Catholic and
George was Episcopalian.
• George was Molly's math tutor. Her family did not accept them because of religious differences. They
eloped.
o When Molly died, George Evans was so upset he converted to Catholicism and brought
Richard, and his sister, Ruth, up as Catholics.
o Molly had told George she would get him to convert and stories say after she died and he
converted he chuckled and said that she told him "she'd get him in the end".
How Richard and Marian Met:
• Marian and Richard met in Tientsin.
• Richard was Catholic, Marian (was a Congregationalist).
o Marian Gertrude MacGown was born on April 27, 1884 in Blue Hill, Maine and died on
September 12, 1961 in San Jose, California.
o She went to China in 1911.
• Marian was part of the Missionary Community and Richard was part of the business community, but
the community of Americans wasn't large and so they met.
• Marian would stay with the McCanns in Peitaiho.
• Richard would visit and bring a box of candy. Marian thought it was for the children. People told her it
was for her, and it finally dawned on her that the candy was for her. She thought she would never get
married.
• Richard and Marian came back to the United States to get married. They were married in North
Yarmouth, Maine on July 31, 1912 and then returned to Tientsin, China to live and raise their family.
• They had 7 children, Mary Seaton, Frances Taylor, Ruth (Ruthie) Hastings, Richard Taylor and Margaret
E. (twins), William (Bill) Taylor and Nora (Mei Hwa – Chinese name meaning "beautiful flower").
o In 1922 the twins died in Peitaiho from dehydration due to illness. They were a year old.
Nora's Stories:
• Nora remembers lying in bed and hearing her parents talking downstairs and her mother laughing.
• Richard loved to make Marian laugh.
• Richard would come down for breakfast and lift up Nora's curls and blow on her neck (motor boat).
o Richard Buys (Nora's son), did the same thing to his children.
• Richard and Marian would sit at table and discuss the news.
• When Richard came home from the office, Marian would be reading to the children in the dining room
(each child got to choose which book she would read).
o Nora remembers her sister, Mary (the oldest), chose David Copperfield and Nora couldn't wait
for it to be over.
• As Marian was reading, the children would hear Richard coming. Nora would run to him. He would
pick her up and hug her and she would feel the stubble on his cheek.
• When Nora was in 8th grade she got a note from Bob McCann saying that he liked her and would she
be his? Nora was so happy, she was madly in love, but they never kissed.
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o Nora remembers her father being proud of her after a piano concert. There was the drum
beat of war, people were leaving China, but as far as she was concerned the world was perfect,
she was in love and her father was proud of her.
• In 1934, Grandma, Nora (3rd grader), Ruthie (?), Bill (8th grader), and Franny (college age) took a
German freighter from Tientsin to the United States. They stopped at Shanghai, Hong Kong, the
Philippines, Manila (they were there on the 4th of July), Malaysia Singapore, Sri Lanka, across the Indian
Ocean, up the Red Sea, saw the pyramids, crossed the Mediterranean, Genoa, Colon and picked-up
Mary in Germany. They then went to Hamburg, and across the ocean to New York City. Grandma took
them to Turner, Maine where her younger brother, Guy Ernestus MacGown, and his wife, Helen
Staples Mitchell, lived. Nora, Ruth and Bill stayed with them for a year. Marian dropped Mary off at
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts and Franny at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.
On the way back to China they stopped in Cuba.
o Nora is grateful for the year long trip and going to Cuba.
• Nora is not sure why they spent a year in Maine, it may have been because Marian wanted her
children to have roots in the United States.
Miscellaneous:
• Richard had rheumatic fever, malaria, scarlet fever.
• Bob McCann was in the Japanese operated, Weihsien Internment Camp from 1951-1961.
o The Camp was located in the present day city of Weifang, Shandong, China.
• Uncle Bill went to the German school in China (Richard and Marian hoped he'd learn discipline). Uncle
Bill hated it.
• Grandma died of emphysema (Richard thinks it was fibrosis and the diagnosis of emphysema reflected
medical knowledge of the time). Soft coal was burned in Tientsin (China in general), this along with
the fact that Marian had walking pneumonia before she went to China likely caused the fibrosis.
o Soft coal created a "Tientsin fog" and Mrs. McCann would comment on the smell of Tientsin
due to the use of soft coal.
• Grandma Marian helped put her brother's son, Phil, through college.
• Grandma chose the East Coast because Franny, Mary and Ruthie were there.
o Montclair, New Jersey was a fairly international community outside of New York City.
o Two people she knew in China were living in Montclair. One was a realtor and helped them
find the house in Upper Montclair, 170 North Mountain Avenue.