While sitting in an office in Ewing Manor reading a century-old personal journal, Dr. Miranda Lin sometimes laughed out loud. At other times she was surprised to read about a place in China or Thailand she’d been to.
Born in Taiwan and fluent in Mandarin, the School of Teaching and Learning professor was tapped to interpret some of the writings and artifacts from Davis and Hazle Buck Ewing’s 1924 trip around the world.
Along the 14-month journey, the Bloomington couple collected hundreds of keepsakes, from an elephant bell slipped around elephants’ necks to warn people of their presence, to a metal canteen that kept camel riders hydrated in the desert.
Those artifacts and journal writings will be featured in a yearlong exhibit of the Ewings’ journey. Stowaway with the Ewings: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Their World Tour, opens October 17 at Ewing Cultural Center and runs through September 2025.
Toni Tucker, director of the Ewing Cultural Center, has been working with descendants of the Ewing family who discovered the personal journals in a box in storage. The eight bound volumes were returned to Ewing to be kept in the family’s archive preserved there.
Lin read through some of the journals written by Davis and Hazle Ewing, along with their oldest son, Ralph, who was 17 at the time of their journey.
“I felt like I was reading a history book through his lens,” Lin said of the father’s journal, which documented Davis’ interest in historical sites and architecture. “And I’ve been to many of these places, so I was like, ‘Ah, this is something I failed to sample,’ or ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was there.’ He paid attention to small, small details.”
Hazle focused on the culture, women, children, and animals in her journals, Tucker said. And their son, who was spending his senior high school year abroad, wrote about “girls, and food, and dances.”
The Ewings didn’t travel like tourists. Instead, they immersed themselves in the culture of the 22 countries visited, exploring with curiosity about the ideas, beliefs, and daily routines of those far from home. Davis described his fascination with the Japanese custom of reading from right to left.
Hazle purchased items she probably would never use, including silk purses, straw slippers, and nesting boxes, likely because she wanted to help the local economy, Tucker said.
“Hazle really supported women so when they were on the streets selling things they made, she bought them to help support them and their families.”
The trip that started in Japan and ended in India was planned by a Massachusetts travel company and cost $3,850 per person, or $65,774 in today’s dollars. A brochure assured travelers the trip involved “no risks beyond those which are involved in the dangerous business of living.”
The family left August 15, 1924, and returned in October 1925, traveling by steamship, car, train, plane, rickshaw, and camel. Nearly 200 keepsakes, from pottery to a solid gold miniature jewelry box crafted by a former samurai sword maker, were carefully shipped home in trunks along the way.
Davis journaled about his apprehension on their first plane flight, from Brussels to London.
“The plane taxied around the whole course twice before it could be lifted into the air. It was at this time that I wished I could pull a bell cord and stop the car. Once in the air, however, everything was lovely.”
“I had taken it for granted that we were to fly in an open plane, and I had bundled up in all the warm clothes I possessed. Imagine my surprise when I was ushered into a cozy little cabin and seated in a comfortable armchair with a glass window at my side, which could be opened or closed at will. I wasn’t long in the air before my window was opened to its fullest extent.”
A talented photographer, Davis documented the trip in more than 2,500 photographs. Lin sifted through photos to select those for the exhibit. Lin’s involvement with the project started last spring, when a Ewing volunteer said she knew someone who could interpret and identify some of the Asian artifacts.
She looked at a trunk with a Mandarin symbol on the latch. “That says longevity,” she said, adding that she wished she’d been involved with the world tour collection earlier. “I wish I could have spent more time on this.”
What Tucker hopes visitors will take away from the tour is something that was very important to Hazle Ewing. In her journal, she expressed her wish that everyone could have the opportunity to experience other cultures and countries.
“As we were on our way home, with the long miles of ocean all around us, I found myself thinking that if every world citizen could take the same kind of a trip we had taken, there would be no more war. We had found that our ideas of the good life were shared by most thinking people everywhere.”
The exhibit includes QR codes, which will allow visitors to hear readers bringing the words from the journals to life. It will include more than 60 artifacts, including art. For more information, visit the Ewing website.
