Looking for Joe Shoong
Jan 31, 2013 19:05:15 GMT -5
Post by Doug 周 on Jan 31, 2013 19:05:15 GMT -5
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Background: Joe Shoong (1879-1961), an entrepreneur and philanthropist, was one of the first Chinese American millionaires. He owned the western US based National Dollar Store chain.Typically he would hire young Chinese men from his hometown in Zhongshan to give opportunities to manage the various stores. My paternal grandfather managed an Ogden, Utah store.
His wealth and philanthropy brought him such fame that in his hometown of Oakland, California, he would entertain politicians such as Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek.
My parents’ generation would brag about any connection with Joe Shoong. My deceased mother’s social group had a member who used to proudly proclaim being the secretary of Joe Shoong. Others would identify relatives with association to Joe Shoong. This is similar to people trying to find a connection to US President Thomas Jefferson, or to descendent of the original Mayflower arrivals.
His philanthropy extended to the local infrastructure of my paternal ancestral village. One of the social glues of the area is a unique Cantonese dialect of the area called Lungdu. Since we also share the same surname, I wanted to look for a genealogical connection to Joe Shoong. My elder’s oral histories claimed that Joe Shoong was the same 17th generation as my grandfather. Our common Chinese surname is Joe 周. After immigration to the USA, Joe Shoong acquired the American surname Shoong and continued to use Joe as his American given name.
From this 2009 Asian Weekclick: "Birth Place: Dachong Town, Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province, China." I wrongly depended on using Western spelling (early in my genealogy studies I also fell into the common trap of depending on phonetic spelling). Knowing my father’s ancestral village is Long Tau Wan 龙头环/龍頭環 (LTW) and inserting the word ‘Dachong’ into the search box of Google maps showed that Dachongzhen is rather westward of LTW. For about 2 years, I was believed this misinformation and that Joe Shoong was not from my fathers LTW.
However, upon finding an older 2007 postclick by twoupman "Longdu 隆都 is called Dayong town ( you may also see it as Dachong) 大涌鎮"; made me further doubt my Google map search.
In 2010, I commissioned a search and receivedclick my zupu from Tan ShiCheng. Using Joe Shoong’s characters, I would spend hours trying find Shoong’s name in my zupu, finally giving up, convinced that Joe Shoong was on some lost branch whose zupu I did not own.
What renewed my determination was this statement from douglaslam (DL) during his 2011 travelogclick: "Ask anyone from LTW who is the village's most famous son, the answer is always one Joe Shoong. It is a reputation well deserved. His generosity earned universal praise and respect. LTW is justifiably proud of their favourite son." Laohuaqiaoclick shared from an Chinese internet searchclick in 2011 more specific information: "In Simplified Chinese (bold my emphasis), it gave a brief life history of Joe Shoong. His names 名华崧, 字毓秀 and father's name 简廉 appeared in the second paragraph."
Again armed with this additional information, I again searched my zupu by painfully comparing characters in my Chinese illiterate ways of comparing strokes and dots. All to no avail. What does one do when they hit a brick wall: ask for help.
Early 2012, DL offered information about a clan (Zhou) member living in Oakland, CA. DL’s contacts in Australia mentioned that Roger Joe might know the lineage of Joe Shoong. Making contact with Roger Joe is a tale in itself and probably one repeated by members trying to glean information from elders.
The initial call ended in gruff man saying Roger Joe does not live here, and hung up abruptly. I called again and this time a woman answered and admitted that Roger Joe was out and would be back in the afternoon. Busted!
After leaving a long voice message explaining my motives, I finally got a return call. Roger had used a paper name to enter the country, and never changed his name back to his Zhou (Joe) surname. He explained that he had not heard the name Roger Joe for over 50 years. Even more serendipitously, he had roomed with my father in Guangzhou when they were adolescents in boarding school, learning the city dialect (Sam Yup as opposed to the village dialect Lungdu) and getting a non-rural education. It was fun with that connection. Unfortunately, he had no inkling of Joe Shoong’s lineage.
Finally, in his most recent visit to China in late 2012, DL kindly offered to inquire in the ancestral village about Joe Shoong’s lineage. He made contactclick
with the probable guardian of the genealogy records. DL’s provided additional zupu images of what I thought initially was different lineage from my own zupu. Not knowing Chinese, I again searched but could not recognize the names from laohuaqiao reference source. However, the hint was in laohuaqiao post that the article was written in simplified Chinese. With that epiphany I used Chinese Tools Simplified to Traditional converterclick to convert the words. This provided the match with DL’s sources.
I had months previously painstakingly entered my whole zupu into my genealogy software. The purpose was to allow Chinese search engines to index my database and to use my online presence as “cousin bait”. With the data already entered, I then plugged in Joe Shoong’s generational name into the my program’s search engine, and behold, I got a match. Joe Shoong was in my zupu all along!
My relationship calculator displays that my grandfather is the 3rd cousin of Joe Shoong.
Now I need to find a relationship to the famous diplomat Zhou Enlai (周恩来)
Background: Joe Shoong (1879-1961), an entrepreneur and philanthropist, was one of the first Chinese American millionaires. He owned the western US based National Dollar Store chain.Typically he would hire young Chinese men from his hometown in Zhongshan to give opportunities to manage the various stores. My paternal grandfather managed an Ogden, Utah store.
His wealth and philanthropy brought him such fame that in his hometown of Oakland, California, he would entertain politicians such as Sun Yatsen and Chiang Kaishek.
My parents’ generation would brag about any connection with Joe Shoong. My deceased mother’s social group had a member who used to proudly proclaim being the secretary of Joe Shoong. Others would identify relatives with association to Joe Shoong. This is similar to people trying to find a connection to US President Thomas Jefferson, or to descendent of the original Mayflower arrivals.
His philanthropy extended to the local infrastructure of my paternal ancestral village. One of the social glues of the area is a unique Cantonese dialect of the area called Lungdu. Since we also share the same surname, I wanted to look for a genealogical connection to Joe Shoong. My elder’s oral histories claimed that Joe Shoong was the same 17th generation as my grandfather. Our common Chinese surname is Joe 周. After immigration to the USA, Joe Shoong acquired the American surname Shoong and continued to use Joe as his American given name.
From this 2009 Asian Weekclick: "Birth Place: Dachong Town, Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province, China." I wrongly depended on using Western spelling (early in my genealogy studies I also fell into the common trap of depending on phonetic spelling). Knowing my father’s ancestral village is Long Tau Wan 龙头环/龍頭環 (LTW) and inserting the word ‘Dachong’ into the search box of Google maps showed that Dachongzhen is rather westward of LTW. For about 2 years, I was believed this misinformation and that Joe Shoong was not from my fathers LTW.
However, upon finding an older 2007 postclick by twoupman "Longdu 隆都 is called Dayong town ( you may also see it as Dachong) 大涌鎮"; made me further doubt my Google map search.
In 2010, I commissioned a search and receivedclick my zupu from Tan ShiCheng. Using Joe Shoong’s characters, I would spend hours trying find Shoong’s name in my zupu, finally giving up, convinced that Joe Shoong was on some lost branch whose zupu I did not own.
What renewed my determination was this statement from douglaslam (DL) during his 2011 travelogclick: "Ask anyone from LTW who is the village's most famous son, the answer is always one Joe Shoong. It is a reputation well deserved. His generosity earned universal praise and respect. LTW is justifiably proud of their favourite son." Laohuaqiaoclick shared from an Chinese internet searchclick in 2011 more specific information: "In Simplified Chinese (bold my emphasis), it gave a brief life history of Joe Shoong. His names 名华崧, 字毓秀 and father's name 简廉 appeared in the second paragraph."
Again armed with this additional information, I again searched my zupu by painfully comparing characters in my Chinese illiterate ways of comparing strokes and dots. All to no avail. What does one do when they hit a brick wall: ask for help.
Early 2012, DL offered information about a clan (Zhou) member living in Oakland, CA. DL’s contacts in Australia mentioned that Roger Joe might know the lineage of Joe Shoong. Making contact with Roger Joe is a tale in itself and probably one repeated by members trying to glean information from elders.
The initial call ended in gruff man saying Roger Joe does not live here, and hung up abruptly. I called again and this time a woman answered and admitted that Roger Joe was out and would be back in the afternoon. Busted!
After leaving a long voice message explaining my motives, I finally got a return call. Roger had used a paper name to enter the country, and never changed his name back to his Zhou (Joe) surname. He explained that he had not heard the name Roger Joe for over 50 years. Even more serendipitously, he had roomed with my father in Guangzhou when they were adolescents in boarding school, learning the city dialect (Sam Yup as opposed to the village dialect Lungdu) and getting a non-rural education. It was fun with that connection. Unfortunately, he had no inkling of Joe Shoong’s lineage.
Finally, in his most recent visit to China in late 2012, DL kindly offered to inquire in the ancestral village about Joe Shoong’s lineage. He made contactclick
with the probable guardian of the genealogy records. DL’s provided additional zupu images of what I thought initially was different lineage from my own zupu. Not knowing Chinese, I again searched but could not recognize the names from laohuaqiao reference source. However, the hint was in laohuaqiao post that the article was written in simplified Chinese. With that epiphany I used Chinese Tools Simplified to Traditional converterclick to convert the words. This provided the match with DL’s sources.
I had months previously painstakingly entered my whole zupu into my genealogy software. The purpose was to allow Chinese search engines to index my database and to use my online presence as “cousin bait”. With the data already entered, I then plugged in Joe Shoong’s generational name into the my program’s search engine, and behold, I got a match. Joe Shoong was in my zupu all along!
My relationship calculator displays that my grandfather is the 3rd cousin of Joe Shoong.
Now I need to find a relationship to the famous diplomat Zhou Enlai (周恩来)