CONTENTS
Links to pages Early photos Adoption letter Birth Cerificate Sue Lee Gardens connection Charlie Lum |
If this website has a begining this where is began, as a blog created for my Dads 83rd birthday, followed by obscure archives, documents, research, maps, emails, writing editorial, photo restoration. Two more websites were added for my Mum`s side and family tree than continues to grow as more and more relatives add what they know. The question children often ask parents 'where do we come from' could never really be answered.
I`m pleased to say I know the answer apart from one, my Dad`s father, there are rumours, stories, theories but still unknown. One rumour is that it was Jim Yuan a sojourner at the Sue Lee Gardens at Saltwater creek. Which was parly owned by Jim`s Aunt Hannah & Uncle Charlie Lum. Contact with relatives in NZ and Norway has made all the effort worthwhile, sharing the stories and geneology a privilege. |
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John James Andressend
( the spelling on the birth Certificate) Born 21 June 1926 Jims Parents May Caroline Andreassend & unknown Chinese worker probably from the Sue Lee Garden Marriage Dorothy Hazel Barron 25 April 1934 Married 16 August 1952 Chalmers Church, Timaru Children James Kevin Peter Ronald 1959 Mark Occupation Cabinet maker, Builder Sports NZ Hockey All Blacks 1952 South Canterbury Rep Hockey Cycling Road and Track |
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With this simple letter May gives up her son to be raised by Hannah Bertha as her own. As can be seen May intended her son to be named James John whereas the birth certificate reverses the order. Jim was not expected to live and was said to be the weight of a "pound of butter" As can be seen this is also the correct spelling of the surname.
Although dated 1926, the two stamps, were issued for the first world war. Who Charles Pownall Don is unknown, the only references I have found include in both the Australian and New Zealand Birth, Death and Marriages Registers are Birth 1880 Australia Married Laura Woodruffe 1918 NZ Died 1918 aged 38 years NZ |
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Jim recently applied to renew his passport, closer scrutiny of his birth certificate and letters to Birth Death and Marriages Department at NZ Internal Affairs resulted in the adjacent correspondence. Considering the age of Jim and that all the other parties have passed away, withholding information about ones birth seems unreasonable and goes against principles of fairness and ones right to know as written in the United Nations Convention on Rights of the child, surely those rights continue into adulthood.
Article 8 1. States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. 2. Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm |
Memories
After school fights with Noel Smith who would call Jim `Chinaman`, as he lived with Chinese children. (Lum)
The Chinese Vegeman and Milkman used to come around on a horse and cart to deliver produce. Milk was dispensed from Milk urns into each family milk jug. Further research indicates that this probably was someone from the Saltwater Creek Gardens where Jim`s Aunty and Uncle lived
After school fights with Noel Smith who would call Jim `Chinaman`, as he lived with Chinese children. (Lum)
The Chinese Vegeman and Milkman used to come around on a horse and cart to deliver produce. Milk was dispensed from Milk urns into each family milk jug. Further research indicates that this probably was someone from the Saltwater Creek Gardens where Jim`s Aunty and Uncle lived
References www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz
Dr James Ng has written several books about Chinese in New Zealand " Windows of Chinese Past" which mentions The Sue Lee Gardens, Saltwater creek in Timaru as well as the NG family
The Sue Lee Gardens are where Jim`s Aunt Hannah Christina lived with her Chinese Husband Charlie Lum in the 1920`s. Jim was born in 1926 and one comment is that he was conceived at Saltwater creek which would have been around November or October 1925. European name Charlie Lum Birth name Ng Gem Lum Adult name Ng Moon Gain Name of marriage certificate Ngh Gim LUM bn 1868-1930 North Taishan District China died in China Brother Ng Moon Jem birth name Ng Fook Sau European name Eng Gooe Jim who also had a son Ng Thoan Hok Excerpt about Sue Lee Gardens by James Ng "The Gore gardeners transferred to Allenton in north Ashburton, where at least three Taishan men including Ng Moon Jems1 (birth name Ng Fook Sau; European name Eng Gooe Jim, who was baptised by Rev. R. Jackson in Chalmers Presbyterian Church, Timaru c.1903) had earlier established a garden in c.1911.(40) Ng Moon Jem was from the Koon Yat (Kung Yik, Gongyi) district in north Taishan. He and his brother Ng Moon Gain (birth name Ng Jem Lum) and possibly another younger brother had worked at the Sue Lee garden. Probably the Allenton garden had not done well because it struck strong competition from a Zengcheng Cantonese market garden at Tinwald in south Ashburton.(41) The latter was still a five-men garden in 1917, but the former was not mentioned in the Register of Aliens of that year. This was a sure sign that it had closed, |
the second Seyip Cantonese garden in Ashburton to do so because Rev. Don in 1883 had recorded another garden there of six men apparently headed by two persons of the Yee clan.(42)Earlier in 1921 (when there was not enough work for them in Gore) my father and Ng Sew Nam had gone to Allenton and reported on its good potential for a garden despite the previous closure in that suburb. As a result, land was bought in Allens Rd., Allenton, again in Ng Fon’s name, and the transfer from Gore proceeded. It appears that the young gardeners from Gore combined with veteran Allenton gardeners including Ng Moon Jem. See Thak became the leader of the garden - or at least the leader of the young ones. The new venture was named ‘King Bros.’, the ‘King’ being an approximation to the popular European pronunciation (‘Ning’) of Ng and also to ‘Kane’, the middle part of the birth names of the four sons of Ng Yee Dep. Eventually all these four went to Allenton and took shares in King Bros. The only Gore gardener who did not go there was Ng Jim Kwong, who went to Wellington and China and was called back to both King Bros. and the Sue Lee garden in Timaru ‘because he knew enough English to go on hawking rounds and drive a truck.’ A truck could take bigger loads further, say to auction markets, than a horse and cart which were best suited for hawking rounds on the flat). Ng Jim Kwong chose Sue Lee. At the time Sue Lee was being reorganised with new Ng shareholders as already mentioned.(43) He stayed at Sue Lee for the rest of his working life and was a quiet, hardworking man scarred by smallpox (one of two such Chinese I have seen in New Zealand) and noted for his reliability. He was also the last Ng male of the post-World War I arrivals in the South Island, New Zealand; he died in Timaru in 1994, aged 93.
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Exceprt from Ng Fon and his family in New Zealand.
Other Taishan Ngs had gone to the ‘Saltwater Creek garden’ (‘Harm Sue yun’) or ‘Sue (Water) Lee (Good Fortune) yun (garden’)g1 in Timaru, despite the competition of perhaps three other Chinese gardens serving that city at Fairview (owned by the Taishan Ma clan), Sandietown and possibly Wilson St.(31) The Ngs at Timaru had bought their garden from Lo Flo, a Panyu man,(32). The first group of Ng owners were chiefly Ng Moon Jem’s people (q.v.) from north Taishan, followed in the early to mid-1920s by a second group of Ngs mainly from our Onn Foon district, Taishan. The reason, it is thought, is that with the exception of the pioneer Ng Sar Foo and Ng Moon Jem and perhaps one or two others, the Koon Yat men did not or could not bring their sons and kin to New Zealand. The garden was on the coast by the mouth of Saltwater Creek, which served as the southern boundary of the city. |
When the writer was a boy, the Sue Lee men’s rough dormitory, huts and garages were fronted by a half-dead macrocarpa fence and the whole complex was an eyesore, being on the south side of the creek where the main south road crossed it.(33) y then the garden’s land was exhausted and lowered by repeated cropping. By the 1960s, Sue Lee had only three men left(34) to work the property and leased land of the garden, which closed in 1964. But when vegetable prices were high in two or so years in the early 1920s,(35) this Timaru garden reputedly was the most profitable garden in the South Island, earning £300-£400 per year per man for seven shareholders. That may have been the time when Sue Lee had three horse and cart hawking rounds. Thus the stage was set in Gore and Timaru for the coming of the next generation after shipping was normalised following World War I. Much of this information is in Don’s Roll of Chinese, directories and the New Zealand Register of Aliens, 1917. Although naturalised, my grandfather and other naturalised Chinese were included in the aliens register, in his case as ‘Ing Fong’, aged 49.
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