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Correspondence, writings, photographs and printed materials of John Hall Paxton, American foreign service officer. The papers reflect primarily Paxton's service in China from 1925 to 1949, broken only by a year in Teheran in 1943. He made a dramatic escape from China (1949) and returned to the United States. He broadcast for the Voice of America, and returned as Consul to Isfahan, Iran in 1951, where he died in 1953. His papers include reports on Chinese economic and political conditions, memoranda on Nanking and the Nationalist takeover in 1927; an account of the U.S.S. Panay incident in 1937, to which he was an eyewitness; a record of his internment in Nanking by the Japanese in 1942, and articles and letters on his escape from China in 1949. An unpublished manuscript, Consul to Sinkiang, is among the papers, as are extensive collections of photographs of China and Iran. Correspondents include Everett Drumright, Margaret Mackiernan, wife of Douglass Mackiernan, and Willys Peck.