Letter from Doris Todd Brown

Doris Todd Brown October 25, 2000
Born March 22, 1928 in Peking, China

My parents, Lois Pendleton Todd, M.D. and Oliver Julian Todd, Civil Engineer, met in North China in 1924 where they were working – she as a medical missionary and he as a Civil Engineer working on projects to help with the historical flooding of “China’s Sorrow” or the Yellow River. All four of us children were born in China. We moved to Palo Alto, California following the invasion of North China by the Japanese in 1937.
We moved to Palo Alto, California because our mother had a job offer to be a student health physician at Stanford University in 1938. Peking or Beiching surrendered to the Japanese at Marco Polo Bridge in May 1937. My father had no work on the Yellow River for National Chinese broke all the levees on the Yellow River in an attempt to stop the Japanese invasion. Palo Alto remained the family home until my father died in 1974.
My mother Lois Pendleton was born April 14, 1894 to Jessie and John Louis Pendleton in Minneapolis, Mn. Her family included her 4 year old brother Robert moved to a prune ranch in Saratoga, California 6 months later. She went to school in the village of Saratoga and then rode horseback to Campbell Union High School. She later went to the University of California in Berkeley and then graduated from the UCSF Medical School in San Francisco before going to China as a medical missionary in 1920.
My father, Oliver Julian Todd was the third of seven children, all of whom lived to old age in good health. They grew up on a farm in Michigan were the work was demanding. Following graduation from high school in Kalamazoo, he worked many jobs in Colorado and Idaho, where he had a homestead for two years, i.e. cook at a lumber camp milkman etc to save money for college. He returned to Ann Arbor Michigan to become a Civil Engineer. (1904-8). In 1906, following his graduation from the University of Michigan, Dad moved to San Francisco, Calif, where he was headquartered until World War I 1917 (He went to France as an army engineer working on water and sewage problems until 1919. He had started working for the San Francisco Water Department in 1908 measuring snowfall in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite and in planning for the future enormous Hetch Hetchy San Francisco water supply. When he returned to San Francisco from France, his former chief, John Freeman asked him to accompany him to China on a project of the Chinese Government to rehabilitate the ancient “Grand Canal”. Mr. Freeman soon left China for the USA while my father stayed on until 1938 and then later returned UNRRA in 1948 for a brief assignment.
Lois and Julian Todd were married in July 1927 at the Los Banos Philippine Island home of her older brother Robert Pendleton and his wife Anne. My Grandmother Jessie Pendleton (1870-1948) and her youngest daughter Adaline were present for they had come for a long visit with her overseas children. She had been mourning the sudden death of her husband John Louis Pendleton in 1924 and needed to get away. Her older children Robert, Lois and Morris chipped in and bought Jessie a one way ticket to China and the Orient in 1926 and a round trip child’s ticket for then 9 year old Adaline. They were away almost 18 months before the return ticket could be obtained for Jessie (JLP 1866-1924)
I was the oldest of four children
Doris Jean March 22, 1928
Lois Elinor November 21, 1929
James Pendleton Dec 5, 1931
Hewlett Freeman March 19, 1933

We attended school at the integrated Peking-American School until we left China because of the war in spring 1938. When I was little I remember my father telling me Paul Bunyon stories and having me ride his foot as he sang “Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross”. Mother would sing to us at bedtime as she played her melodious spanish guitar.
Every summer we went to a beach house at Pei Ta Ho where we learned to swim. The weather was much pleasanter summers at the beach than in Peking. We loved going on picnics to the nearby sand dune mountains. I remember seeing my mother stitching up a badly cut peasant’s forearm. Another time we took a train ride to Shan Hai Kwan to visit the Great Wall where it comes to the sea.
In Peking or Peiping, I remember ice-skating in the winter either on a frozen tennis court or on the solidly frozen and bumpy Bei Hai Lake near the Forbidden City. We also liked to visit the then out-of-town “Summer Palace” where the Empress Dowager spent her navy funds on building a white marble boat in a lake with gorgeous painted arcades and arbors.
In Peking, we lived in a large brick Western style house in a compound of the “College of Chinese Studies”. We learned to ride bicycles on the compound sidewalks. We rode to school in a rickshaw. We had an amah or Chinese nursemaid to watch us. One time, when I was seven years old, the amah “Wan Nai Nai” spotted me climbing a 100-foot smoke stack at the compound heating plant (which was coal fired). I was afraid to look down as I climbed the chimney. I made the amah promise not to tell my mother and then I nervously climbed down. The amah never told my mother.
We children learned to speak Mandarin Chinese the same time we learned English. Mother said we never mixed the Chinese and English languages. When we moved to California, mother tried to get us to talk Mandarin with her. We soon forgot the Mandarin Chinese. When we went to San Francisco China Town, we found we did not understand the Cantonese dialect spoken there. Too Bad!
I grew up in a very unusual family for those times. Mother worked outside the home as a doctor. Our father was away from time to time much of our youth on various engineering jogs – in China on the Yellow River and later in California and other western states with the army engineers. In those years, mothers were expected to stay home with children. When we first came to Palo Alto, it was the end of the Depression and there were few jobs. When my father went to work for Army Engineers, he was usually out of town for some time. However, we received many letters and postcards from him and were expected to reply and did so. When my father was home in China or California, we often would go on hikes. Our parents also liked to play tennis. When we moved to Palo Alto, municipal tennis courts were about a mile from our house. We frequently would go to play tennis when all the house and yard chores were done. I was not as good as the others, for as my brother James would say, “You close your eyes when the ball gets near!”
Oh yes, Dad liked to have penmanship contests. His was not good and he hoped we would better ours. Usually Elinor would win. Nowadays her pen is really no more legible than mine.
When our family moved to Palo Alto, we no longer had servants as in China. Mother worked part time as a Doctor at Stanford University so we had chores to do. I was oldest so I had to mow the big lawns. We cleaned house and helped with clothes washing and ironing. Each child made his or her own bed. That first year Hewlett age became ill. Our mother thought he had appendicitis. The doctor she called in thought it was “worms”. Earlier we had had to take horrid medicine to purge out large ascaris worms acquired in China. Well, in the middle of the night his appendix ruptured. It took him six months to recover. No antibiotics then, only early sulfa. He was lucky to recover. of course, he was excused from chores for a long time.
Summers Elinor and I went to Girl Scout Camp at Big Basin Redwood Park starting in 1938. At first, we’d go for 2 weeks to sleep under the stars. Later we went six weeks. We would hike down a dusty trail to a dammed creek. (Sempervirens Creek to swim in the frigid water. Each year, the water felt colder. Funny.
Summers during World War II, we picked crops in the Santa Clara Valley. Sometimes we helped our mother freeze peas or raspberries we had picked at a farm. Other times we helped her make strawberry or raspberry plum jam. The plums came from the yard. September, we went up to the old Pendleton family pear ranch along Skyline Boulevard in the Santa Cruz Mountains and pick pears to be ripened in our “Seven Pines” basement for canning. Then in the fall, we competed with the Squirrels to get the downed walnuts to dry after being husked.
I attended Lytton Avenue elementary school for the sixth grade in Palo Alto fall 1938-1939. Then three years at Jordan Junior High School to which I always rode my bicycle. For the tenth grade, I rode the train to Eugene, Oregon to spend the year with Aunt Vera and Uncle Ralph and to get reacquainted with my 95 year old grandmother Todd. Julia Farrand Todd b. 1847 d. 1942 and I became better acquainted with this very smart 95-year-old lady dressed in old-fashioned clothes. She could recite poetry and talk of many things. She once was a schoolteacher before she married. She told of asking her father to return home from seminary because President Lincoln had been shot. She was married many years to Oliver Hovey Todd b. 1847 d. 1930. I don’t remember him although we have a photo of a bearded old man holding me as a baby. He had a red beard in younger days. When he was a boy, his job was to tend the fire in the wood stove while his father took Black slaves in a hay wagon across the Canadian border to be freed. That was before the Civil War. He became a surveyor and a schoolteacher.
Fall of 19443, I entered Palo Alto High School for my junior and senior years. A friend of mine, Brigitte F., was going to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and so I applied for a “Seven College Scholarship” and was accepted at Smith College in Northampton, Mass on the Connecticut River. After living near to the enormous acreage of Stanford University down “on the farm” the compact in-town campus was a surprise. I lived in a co-op dorm, which meant I needed to earn some of my room and board doing housekeeping chores. I had an excellent education there.
My parents had friends and relatives around the worked including New England. Several years my cousin David taught chemistry at nearby Amherst College. He and wife Ellie and children Larry and Becky often entertained me in their 200-year-old drafty house with large standard poodles bounding here and there. Mother had several missionary friends in the area. One couple raised Holstein cows, which they milked by machine. The wife had been a missionary nurse in China with my mother. It was nice weekends when I visited the farm in Westhampton. Early spring was maple sugar season and we boiled down the sap at the sugarhouse. All year long the husband would deliver rich milk and cream to an Ice cream plant in Holyoke. Another of mother’s friends lived first at Dartmouth College and then in Amherst and was also a delightful host.
Christmas vacation meant a train trip to New York City to have Christmas Dinner with missionary friends the Forkners or a trip to Washington, D.C. to spend two weeks with Uncle Laurence, Aunt Dorothy and Daughter Mary. Uncle Laurence was a superb guide around the city. He was the official Tass Washington D.C. reporter until 1945 when he was replaced by a Russian. The summer train trip home took three full days across the continent. I graduated June 1949 and returned to California t stay.
I entered Stanford Medical school fall of 1949 at Stanford campus and lived at home riding my bike to campus regularly. Spring 1951 our medical studies transferred to San Francisco to complete medical school. We received our medical degrees in 1954 after a very strenuous year of interning at San Francisco General Hospital. I married a classmate David Preston Brown b. 1928 m. Aug. 30,1952. Six children were born of that marriage. David asked for a divorce in 1973.
Children
Helen Wisner May 22, 1953
Anne Pendleton Nov 16, 1954
Christopher Todd Jan 16, 1958 – Aug 27, 1999
Margaret Louise Dec. 2, 1959
Charlotte Preston July 6, 1961
Russell David Nov. 11, 1966
After our divorce, I was ordered to go to work to support the six children. Fortunately, I found a part time hand then later a full time job with Santa Clara Kaiser Hospital until I retired in June 1992.
Some ancestors of note were Christopher Todd, came from Scotland to England then America about 1630 A.D. He was a Presbyterian clergyman.
Brian Pendleton was declared a “Freeman” in Massachusetts colony in 1634. Pendletons became sea captains out of Main for about 200 years.
Phineas Farrand, my grandmother Julia Farrand's ancestor, fought at Valley Forge with George Washington in the revolutionary war. His wife was said to have knitted socks for the troops there.
I believe your grandfather David P. Brown can update more on his family. His mother Margaret Wisner Brown b1891 was a schoolteacher and a lovely lady. She loved to play games with her grandchildren. Her brother Chauncy Wisner was sent to India at the same time my Uncle Robert and Aunt Anne Pendleton were in India. After a few years, my relatives left the mission unable to teach his agricultural skills and instead went to the Philippine Islands to teach.
Mother Brown’s younger brother Francis was a physician and Surgeon many many years in Yuba California.
Her parents Oscar Francis Wisner and Sophie Preston were Presbyterian missionaries in Canton China. I believe Sophie was born in China of Missionary parents. Oscar Francis was a teacher and founded Lingman University in Canton. I believe Margaret and Chauncy were born in China. I believe Margaret graduated from Wesleyan or some such College. When she was over 65 and needed to apply for Medicare, she had no acceptable proof of birth. Finally a statement from her college roster and her brother Chauncy was accepted.
Margaret taught school at Mount Diablo High School District Concord. One day, she and her friend Florence’s car broke down on muddy Mount Diablo and friends called Florence’s brother Ed to bail them and the car out with a team of horses.
Edgar David Brown was born in Brentwood, Calif. On a farm. He had one brother and three or four sisters. He was in the Cavalry briefly during World War I stationed in Menlo Park. He was a kindly shy farmer with the most beautiful handwriting. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade to farm. Several of his sisters were childless and they adored David and his handicapped sister Barbara who had Downs Syndrome. After Margaret died in an auto truck accident in Placerville over the age of 80, we saw Barbara almost every holiday when she lived in a care home in San Carlos.

Came to US at the age of 10.