Early Christmas presents in the Chen Ateak and Leau Appa families in 1861. I wonder if Mrs Chen Ateak and Mrs Leau Appa were friends? From the Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1861.
[Actually, there’s an interesting story to tell about Mrs Leau Appa… but that will have to wait for another day, or perhaps another year!]
Hi Kate,
We just discovered, through Family Search, that our great-great-great grandparents were Mary and Henry Leau Appa. My mother’s grandmother, who was their child–perhaps the one born in the ad above–died in the early 1950s and she never said a word about her Chinese grandfather; my mother said the story was that she was born on a ship from Australia and her father was a ship captain named Anderson (who Mary Appa apparently married after Henry Appa’s death). We have no idea how Mary McCarty, who was born in Limerick, Ireland, ended up in Australia, but from Wikopedia I’ve learned about the Chinese in Australia in the mid 19th century and that most of the men married white women, since there was a dearth of Chinese women. After Henry died in 1864, his wife ended up in Pennsylvania with her three children, but we have no idea of how, and whether she married Anderson in Australia or met him in the States. I’m wondering if her Chinese ancestry was not discussed because of racist policies in the U.S.? Anyway we’d love to know more about Mrs. Leau Appa, what happened to her and her children after she and the Chinese were dumped in Indonesia after Henry was killed, as well as more about Henry. There’s a lot of articles about him and quoting him in the Sydney Morning Herald online which I’ve read. P.S. I was in Australia in 1992 on a business trip and if I’d know about this ancestry, would have looked up 213 Lower George St. in Sydney and otherwise tried to learn more about the Chinese.
–Lynn Woods, resident of Kingston, NY, grand-daughter of Mae Greene Davis Ransford, who was youngest of nine children born to her mother (daughter of Henry and Mary, don’t have her name) and father, Charles Green, born in England and worked as steelworker in Pittsburgh, Pa.