This collection, comprised of one photograph album and four 16 mm film reels, documents the voyage of Muriel Webb Treman, Robert "Bob" Treman, Lou and Ella Webb, and an unidentified young boy, possibly Muriel's brother, to China and Japan. Photographs in the album depict scenes of travel, landscapes, animals, and people taking part in daily activities, work, and ceremonies. Photographs also document Chinese refugees and instances of anti-Japanese demonstration, such as burning of Japanese goods. Destinations of the family trip, most likely, include the following places in China and Japan, respectively, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Nanking (now Nanjing), Nikko, Mt. Fuji, and Deer Park in Nara.
Muriel Webb Treman, most likely, took many of the photographs and assembled the album, totalling 96 pages of primarily silver gelatin prints. Extant captions appear in white pencil under photographs, and additional captions, provided by the donor on post-it notes, were photocopied and interleaved with the original album pages. The four 16 mm film reels contain six Lockwood and MacDonald family films. Films include: "Lockwood family movie" (1936), "Pottery making in China" (undated), "MacDonald" (c1925), "MacDonald" (1936), "MacDonald" (c1939), "MacDonald Pottery" (undated). Description of films is taken from reel cores and/or film containers.
Muriel Webb was born in 1899, to Lew Webb, an insurance company executive, and Ella Webb, a homemaker, in Lombard, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Muriel attended Lawrence College (now Lawrence University), where she met Robert ("Bob") Carleton Treman, an American missionary to China. Webb withdrew prior to completing her bachelor's degree, and married Treman in 1919. The couple moved to Nanjing, China shortly afterward under the auspices of the Methodist Missionary Board; Muriel's interest in photography led her to document her husband's missionary work and their travels (including their overseas voyage and journeys through China and Japan in which they were joined by Lew and Ella Webb). Muriel became fluent in Chinese and was active in the Central City Church, often calling on Chinese families at their homes.
Robert Treman died in a flash flood in Kuling, located in the Lushan District of the Jiangxi Province, on August 26, 1921. Kuling was established in 1895 as a sanitarium and resort area for Western missionaries traveling in southern China. Muriel was pregnant with her first child when Robert was killed. She later miscarried.
Muriel remained in Nanjing for three years afterward and then returned to the United States, where she attended the Teachers College, Columbia University, from 1925-2926. Here she met and later married Edward Lockwood, a widower with two children. The two would return to China (where they would stay from 1927-1937), working for the YMCA in Canton; Muriel also taught at the True Light Middle School. While abroad, Muriel had two daughters, Dorothy (born in 1927) and Anne (born in 1932). During the Japanese occupation and World War II, the family left China but later returned only to leave in 1950 after the Communists came to power.
Followig Edward Lockwood's death in Claremont, CA in 1957, Muriel married Henry Refo (whose late wife, Sarah, had also taught at the True Light Middle School) in 1960. Muriel Lockwood Refo died in 1991.
