The year was 1919 and the war to end all wars was over. Jim Avent and his friend Mayes Kirkman were in New York looking for work. Both young men were from Nashville and just out of the army after duty in France. “Mayes convinced me not to reenlist in the army,” Jim recalled, “but to join him in New York for a job that would take us to South America. Through a cousin, we made promising contacts, but we were told to wait a few weeks. Then Mayes came down with the flu, so I went to have a look at the aquarium on lower Broadway. I was wearing my army uniform because my mother had thrown away all my civilian clothes thinking I wouldn’t survive the war. Coming back up the street I passed 26 Broadway, the offices of Standard Oil. I asked the doorman for directions to the Foreign Service department and eh sent me to the 14th floor. My army uniform got me an interview pretty quick and I was offered a job.
“The interviewer asked me what my parents would think about me going to China and I said, ‘I thought I was going to South America.’ The interviewer told me, ‘That’s the 15th floor. This is the China floor.’ I hurried back to Mayes and told him, “We’re going to China.’ Mayes got up the next morning, put on his uniform, and went for an interview. He got a job too.” So at 24, Jim’s plans changed once again, but he had grown accustomed to change.
James Monroe Avent was born on November 21, 1895 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee As a small boy, he moved with his family to Nashville. By the time he was nine, his parents Frank and Mayna Treanor Avent, completed construction of their new home there on the corner of Cedar Lane and Belmont Boulevard. His sister Mary was a few years older. They later built a cabin in Elkmont, Tennessee in the Smoky Mountains where Jim hiked as a boy. He attended Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville, and later enrolled at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee where, after the China years, he spent the last 45 years of his life. He had intended to study for the ministry, but the First World War broke out and he enlisted in the army instead.
On July 1, 1919, Jim landed in Shanghai (Mayes went on to Hong Kong. Best friends, they never worked for Standard Oil in the same locations. Mayes eventually became manager in Singapore. As the Second World War began, Mayes got everyone in his office out safely and was attempting to leave himself when his small coastal steamer was bombed by the Japanese. He did not survive.)
From Shanghai Jim traveled by steamer to the main North China headquarters of the Standard Oil Company, Hankow on the Yangtze River. “I had only two or three days in Hangkow, when I was put on a train that went through Peking, but my destination was Cheng-chow, about half way along the line. The company’s manager hand been held over his home leave time and he left a few days after my arrival. The Company had a nice foreign-style home in Cheng-chow, the office using about half of the house. I did not receive much training from the manager, but the Chines staff I inherited were most helpful. All our business was done through Chinese agents. I soon felt I knew what it was all about, took one of my staff as an interpreter and one trip after another until I had a good idea of my territory. Too, I found a good Chinese teacher who spoke English and started learning how to speak Chinese. I never learned to be a Chinese scholar, but I did absorb enough to check on my interpreter.”
After his first year in China, Jim continued at Cheng-chow for another two and then was transferred all over North China from the Yangtze to the Siberian border. He had home leave in 1923 and again in 1926 when he returned home by way of the Soviet Union. He wrote an account for the Meifoo Shield, the Standard Oil Company magazine, about that trip that has been recently referred to in Pioneers and Pacesetters: 100 Years of Mobile in China, his mother accompanied him, visiting for several months.
Jim met Jeanette Nelson in 1929 as he was leaving China for his third home leave. She was traveling with her moth visiting different countries in Asia. When they left Yokohama for San Francisco, Jim was traveling on the same ocean liner. They met and were engaged before they left ship. They married a few months later. Soon they were on their way back to Asia and Tientsin, China where their children, Jacqueline, Mayna, and James Jr. where born. There were still trips into the interior similar to the ones that were described in the diary, at least until they moved to Tsingtao where he became manager in 1934. The Second World War interrupted his work in China.
He resigned from the Company expecting to take up permanent residency in Nashville, Tennessee, but Standard Oil made him an offer to work in New York City, negotiating contracts for the Standard Oil [Company] with the US Government.
In 1945, six weeks after the Second World War was over, Standard Oil sent Jim to Shanghai to reopen its offices. He was now Marketing Manager and Marketing Attorney for Standard Vacuum Oil Company. It was a position he kept until he retired in 1949.
After the time of his retirement [1949], he and his wife Jeannette bought a partially abandoned house overlooking Lost Cove near Sewanee, Tennessee. The period they spent renovating it was the happiest time of their lives. They never owned real estate in China, so this was their first real home. They named it Mei Kan (Beautiful View in Chinese).
On fifty acres, they raised cattle and chickens, maintained an outstanding vegetable and flower garden, built a small lake where they fished with great pleasure, and entertained. Countless friends and relatives made their way to the mountains of southeastern Tennessee to visit them in Sewanee, and with their close friends Dana and Anna Nance, they hosted several reunions of “old China hands.” For over 30 years they created a beautiful home their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren loved to return to. They continued to travel, but never again to China.
In 1981, they sold Mei Kan and bought a smaller home in Sewanee where they lived with their daughter Jacqueline until Jeanette died in 1989 and Jim and 1995.
Locations in China 1929-1949
Mayna Avent Nance, August 2014
After 1929 it was Tientsin (old spelling)until 1934, Tsingtao 1934-1937 for us and 1938 for Daddy. He came home on leave in 1938 and we returned to Shanghai that year and left there the end of 1940 when we were warned by the State Department. He came home on leave about August 1941 and retired from the Company to our great joy until they hired him back early in 1942 and we moved to New York. I only learned from Jim Lilley not very long ago that Daddy and his father were let go by the Company with all the other China employees because there was no work for them in China. Daddy was hired back early in 1942 but not Lilley’s Dad who got a job as head of the American Red Cross. He was in New York City and Mother and Daddy saw the Lilley’s quite a bit during the War years. After the War the Company hired Jim’s [Lilley] Dad only temporarily to inspect Standard Oil Property in China and report damage. Jim retained his father’s anger toward Standard Oil.
