8. Ing 'Doc' Hay, c. 1890

This portrait of the Chinese doctor Ing Hay was taken when he was nineteen years old. Doc Hay, as he was best known, was a prominent medical practitioner in the eastern Oregon town of John Day for more than sixty years.

Ing Hay was born in Taishan County, Guangdong Province, in 1862. He came from a long line of herbalists and likely learned traditional Chinese medicine from family members. In the 1870s five of Ing’s uncles emigrated to the United States in search of opportunity. Ing and his father soon followed, probably arriving in the U.S. in 1883, a year after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.