Did you know that a native of Monroe County was caught up in the vortex of Chinese history in the 20th century?

Lucy Jim Webb, born in Monroe County in 1895, was a Methodist missionary in China, arriving in 1922, when the country, lacking an effective national government, was caught up in civil war. After Japan invaded China in the 1930s, refugees poured into Shanghai, where she lived, and Miss Webb worked with them, winning recognition for her relief efforts from the government of Chiang Kai-Shek, the Kuomintang. When the Japanese seized Shanghai during World War II, Miss Webb was interned briefly but she was able to return to the United States in 1943. At the end of World War II, she went back to Shanghai, then under the Kuomintang. Three years later, the Communists gained control of the city, “liberating it,” they said. She remained there a year more, but returned to the United States permanently in 1950, having experienced life in China during the tumultuous years stretching from 1922 to 1950.