Buchan, Annie Gray, 1895-

Annie Gray Buchan, London Missionary Society missionary in China, was born in Peterhead on 24 September 1895. She trained as a nurse in Dundee and Edinburgh, then applied to the London Missionary Society and was accepted for China. Her missionary training was at the Women's Missionary College (St Colm's College), Edinburgh and on completing this she sailed for China in February 1925.

After spending nearly a year in Beijing studying Mandarin she moved in 1926 to Tsangchow (Hebei province) to work in the hospital for a few months before settling in Tehchow where she was matron at Siaochang Hospital. Despite occasional evacuations of the missionaries due to fighting the hospital expanded and was registered as a training school for nurses. Annie Buchan was there for nearly fourteen years, with two periods of leave in 1931-32 and 1937-38, until the Japanese invasion forced the missionaries to leave in 1940. She then worked for a time at the Mackenzie Memorial Hospital in Tianjin until she secured permission from the Japanese to visit her sick friend Margery Brameld in Beijing. While she was there all British subjects were sent to internment camps, but she stayed on to nurse her friend in the mission house and later at the British Embassy until Brameld died in 1943.

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