George Fox DeVol was born in 1871 and educated at Earlham College where he met Isabella French, a Friend from Damascus, Ohio. After completing medical school, she joined another Ohio Friend, Ester Butler, and her assistant, Margaret A. Holme, a Brooklyn Quaker, in Nanking. After Isabella and George were married in 1900, they settled in Luho near Nanking. There the DeVols' work grew steadily. Chapels, a hospital, and schools were all built. George DeVol's reputation as a surgeon brought him patients from a wide area. The DeVols gave special attention to warring on the "opium habit." The number of converts grew steadily. Neither of the DeVols was robust: George DeVol died in Luho early in 1917; Isabella at home in Ohio in 1920. Other New York Friends followed them to China. - Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Early Meetings / edited by Alson D. Van Wagner and others, page 209.