Luther Newton Hayes papers

The son of American missionaries Mercie and John Newton Hayes, Luther Newton Hayes was born on April 19, 1883, in Soochow, China. He received a B.S. from Wooster College in 1905 and an M.A. from Princeton University in 1907. In 1906 after finishing his M.A. coursework, he returned to China to work as an English tutor to the grandsons of Chinese Prime Minister Li Hung Chang. In 1908, he began his work with the YMCA in China, serving as principal of the Putung School in Tientsen. He was later transferred to Nanking and established a YMCA there, then moved to Szechuan to serve as secretary of the Chengdu City Association. In 1919 he left China to work for the YMCA in France, then returned in 1921 when he was appointed a Secretary of the national Committee of the YMCA of China. He wrote two books, The Chinese Dragon (1922) and The Great Wall of China (1929).

In 1923, he married Frances Gray, with whom he had one child, Francis Hayes. Frances Gray Hayes died in 1924. In 1927, Hayes married Rhea Pumphrey, and the family spent the next few years in China. After returning to the United States in 1932, Hayes worked at various universities as an administrator and at a museum in Plattsburgh, New York, as a curator. Hayes died March 26, 1978.