My dissertation is a thematic biography of Chinese American physician and political activist
Dr. Margaret Chung (1889-1959).
Margaret Chung's Mother
Ah Yane immigrated to the United States in 1874. Raised in the Chinese Presbyterian Mission Home in San Francisco, she married Chung Wang in 1888 and gave birth to 11 children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. Minnie Chung played the organ and served as a court translator for missionary efforts to "rescue" Chinese women in servitude or prostitution. She died of tuberculosis
For more information about the Chinese Presbyterian Mission Home, now known as Cameron House, see Peggy Pascoe's book, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939 (Oxford, 1990).
Margaret Chung's Father
Chung Wong immigrated to the United States in 1875 and worked a variety of occupations. In her unpublished autobiography, Margaret recalled that:
My father was poor, and I do not remember that he ever made more than $45 a month in his life....My father, who was a good, honest, decent, God-fearing Christian, tried very hard to make a living for his large family and at different times a Chinese art dealer, a farmer, a fruit peddler, foreman of a ranch, truck driver, dairyman.
For more information about Chinese truck-farmers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see Sucheng Chan's This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (California, 1986).
(1909)
Although her father died in a car accident, Margaret Chung had a life-long fascination with automobiles.
She owned a black Chrysler Limousine.
Margaret Chung's favorite publicity photograph
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