Lydia Clara (Lord) Davis was born in Ravenna, Ohio in 1867, graduated from high school and Normal School in 1885, and taught second grade in Ravenna from 1886 to 1889. In August 1889, she married an 1889 graduate of the Oberlin Theological Seminary, Francis Ward Davis (1857- 1900), and the two set out for China as missionaries. They lived at Taigu in Shansi Province for eight years, until 1897 when they returned on furlough to the United States. Francis Davis returned to China alone in the fall of 1899 and shortly thereafter was murdered in the Boxer Uprising of July 31, 1900. Lydia Lord Davis and her three sons settled in Oberlin, Ohio where in 1929 she became Executive Secretary of the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association. She served until her retirement in 1944 and died in Oberlin in 1952. Two of her sons, John Lord and Lewis Eleazer, were the first "Shansi Representatives" of Oberlin College (1918-20), teachers at the Oberlin Memorial School in Taigu, Shansi Province.
From the description of Papers, 1877-1944, 1889-1913. (Oberlin College Library). WorldCat record id: 25681475
