Family Lore: Pride in Our Predecessors

[skyvue]

I thought it fitting we have a thread devoted to our parents, their parents, and ancestors from even further back, a place where we can share stories, ephemera and such that might not fit easily into other threads. (I know we have a family photos thread, but I felt there was room for this thread, too; if you disagree, barkeeps, by all means -- do your duty.)

As I mentioned in another thread, my aunt recently presented my siblings and me with a stack of photographs, letters and other documents that belonged to her parents (our grandparents).

Below is the announcement my parents sent out on the occasion of my birth (to give it proper context, I should explain that my father, who’s still going strong at 83, was a Volvo dealer for more than thirty years).

This announcement pleases me to no end, I have to say. It’s so clever, and I love imagining my folks, who were 29 and 25 at the time, working on it together. They must have had a great time composing it.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

What a clever announcement.
I don't have any visuals at the moment, and only ghosts of the best tales, as my upstanding, church-going grandparents didn't like to expound upon things they weren't proud of. But I have heard that during the Depression, my dad's uncles robbed the bank of Geronimo, Oklahoma (not to be confused with the deadly bank robbery there in 1984). Also, my Grandfather's mother was related to Hank Williams, but we certainly didn't go down that road at family dinners.

 

[dhermann1]

Well, that's all well and good, but I have an ancestor, my great great grandfather, to be precise, who has gone down in history as the inventor of THIS useful device:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=ov...=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[Gingerella72]

Well, that's all well and good, but I have an ancestor, my great great grandfather, to be precise, who has gone down in history as the inventor of THIS useful device:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=ov...=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Oh my.....:eeek:

 

[1930artdeco]

My great grandfather helped finance the 1916 Pan-Pacific expo here in San Francisco. He was friends with several 'delegations' and I still have some furnature from some of the pavilions.

Mike

 

[Shangas]

Below is the announcement my parents sent out on the occasion of my birth (to give it proper context, I should explain that my father, who’s still going strong at 83, was a Volvo dealer for more than thirty years).

This announcement pleases me to no end, I have to say. It’s so clever, and I love imagining my folks, who were 29 and 25 at the time, working on it together. They must have had a great time composing it.

Hahahaha!! I loved that! Very creative.

I never paid much attention to family history before, but I have of recent months, developed a lot of posthumous respect for both my paternal grandfather and grandmother (and when granny was still alive --- she died last year, aged 97!, you can bet I loved her a lot!), and researching their lives through interviewing family members and reading old documents.

If I ever get famous enough to end up on that "Who Do You Think You Are?" TV show, things could be interesting...or not.

My interest in my grandparents stemmed from the fact that I knew a BIT about my grandmother's past, but almost NOTHING of my grandfather's. He died in 1983. That was ALL I knew. And I wouldn't be born for another 4 years.

My grandparents were not movers and shakers by ANY stretch of the imagination. They were ordinary lower-middle-class people who scraped out a living, supporting a household of nearly a dozen people.

My grandfather was born in southern China (I have no proof, but I suspect, in Canton Province) in 1906. He was poor, but educated, which is saying a lot: In those days unless you lived in a big city, you were most likely an illiterate peasant farmer. It was during the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (1644-ca.1908) that he grew up. He left China as a young man in his early twenties (Ca. 1927-1929) and arrived in Singapore. He married and had three children. His wife died soon after.

At this time, he was earning a fairly comfortable living as a newspaper columnist for the local Chinese press.
Grandma was born in Singapore in 1914, the first of four daughters to an immigrant Chinese couple. She was educated for five years at an English convent-school between 1921-1926. Those five years are the sum-total of ALL her education. And yet, she managed to read and write and speak near-fluent English, as well as speaking Cantonese, Malay, Chinese and I think, two other languages. Never went to secondary school, never went to university.

Both my grandparents would've witnessed the devastation of the Japanese invasion of 1942, when Singapore Town was almost razed to the ground. My uncle (from grandpa's first marriage) used to tell me how terrible it was. No running water, no gas, no electricity, no telegraph, telephone, electric lights, very few motor cars, and hardly any food. They had NO idea where their next meal was coming from or how the hell they would get a hold of it. They were surviving day by day, almost hour by hour under the Japanese Occupation. Don't forget that Singapore was damaged very badly in the air-raids, so decent shelter was very hard to find. They were lucky, and managed to keep their house.

In 1943, my grandmother and grandfather married, right smack-bang in the middle of the war. They and all their children got out of it. After the war, my grandmother gave birth to two more children (my dad and my aunt). She took in my Aunt Felicia when her father (my grandmother's brother-in-law) died, and my aunt's mother (gran's sister) was unable to support her entire family. They also adopted another daughter.

So the household consisted of:

Grandma, grandpa, dad, Aunty Lucy, Noni, Nancy, Ah Lian, Felicia and my Uncle Mark. And also the family servant - the Nanny who looked after the children. My grandfather wasn't able to pay her wages, but she agreed to live with the family and raise the children for free, in exchange for food and board. With both parents working, it was essential to have a nanny around to look after the children.

Grandpa lost his job as a journalist during the War and was never able to get it back. He worked for a few years as a shop-assistant at a photography studio. Here are his business-cards:

But grandpa didn't speak a word of English, so on the reverse side...

...all the information is reprinted in Chinese.

Ca. 1952-3, gran opened her dressmaker's shop. You can see the address on the business-cards: "Kam Seng Beauty Parlor". Gran wasn't rich enough to own the entire premises, so she shared it with a ladies' beauty salon at the back, and the clothing shop out the front.

One of gran's sewing-machines. This was her personal one, with which she did most of her work:

Lovingly restored by Yours Truly (see the thread in the Display Case for more information).

This is one of the VERY few family photos we have:

Back: Aunty Lucy, Aunty Noni (both deceased). Uncle Mark (with the tie. Now 76).
Middle: Grandma, Grandpa.
Front: Aunty Nancy, Dad.

Taken: Ca. 1953.

Gran and grandpa were married for 40 years. And when grandpa died, gran lived on for another nearly 30 years.

Grandma and grandpa and their enormous family managed to survive some of the biggest events of the 20th century. The Depression, WWII, and the Malayan Emergency. They struggled by, day by day, by day and made it through. Real fighters.

A very rare photo, the family standing outside gran's dressmaking shop:

L-R: Grandpa, Aunty Nancy, Dad, Grandma.
Taken: Dec. 1975.