Mary Tyng Higgins, 1913-

A. Tyng family

Ethel Arens, daughter of Adelma S.and Edward J. Arens, was born in Boston, on October 25, 1887 and received her A.B. from Radcliffe in 1911. She married Walworth Tyng (Harvard A.B., 1905, Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge [Mass.] S.T.B., 1911), in 1912; they went to China as missionaries in 1913, and for nearly forty years worked as missionaries in Changsha, Hunan Province. At Rev. Tyng's retirement in 1949, they returned to the U.S.A., and he served in parishes in Rome, N.Y., Ardmore, Penn., and Euston, Md. During this period, EAT published two accounts of her life and work in China, Letters to My Grandchildren (1963) and Gate of the Moon (1967), and wrote collections of memories and stories for Christmas: "Tyng-a-Ling Memories" (1972), "More Tyng-a-Ling Memories" (1973), and "Still More Tyng-a-Ling Memories" (1974). The Tyngs had five children: Mary Atkinson, John Stevens, William Wark, Anne Griswold, and Franklin Somes. WT died in 1960 and EAT died in 1974.

B. Higgins family

Mary, eldest child of WT and EAT, was born in Changsha, on April 13, 1913. She returned to the U.S.in 1926 at the outbreak of revolution in China and attended Radcliffe, receiving her A.B. in 1934. She worked as a secretary and teacher of religious education and took care of her younger siblings when they in turn were sent to the U.S. for high school and college. In 1937-1938 she and her sister Anne made a trip around the world, arriving in China as it was invaded by the Japanese and in Vienna shortly after the German annexation of Austria.

MTH met the missionary Charles Ashley Higgins while working in Indo-China and they were married in Hong Kong in 1939 (see #90.) They were captured by the Japanese and interned in 1941, and repatriated in August 1942. The Higginses had five sons: Charles Tyng, Alexander, Ashley, Dudley, and Steven. They lived first in Cape Girardeau, Mo., where CAH was rector of the Episcopal Church, next in Waco, TX. (1946-1957), and then in Little Rock, Ark. where CAH was dean of Trinity Cathedral (1957-77). They moved to Sewanee, Tenn. in 1977. CAH died in 1985.

MTH wrote an unpublished play "Co-Prosperity Hotel" (ca.1942), and three autobiographical books, Up in Kuling and Down (1968), about her childhood in China, Nearly Nineteen (1971), about her Radcliffe years, and With a War On (1984).

From the guide to the Papers, 1912-1987, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)