SUMMARY: What we know, at Oct 1, 2016

 

I will try to lay out the basis for this effort as best as I can here. There’s no real starting point, and I’ve tended to jump around some I my attempt to fill in the blanks about our family. I know a lot more now than a few years back and I continue to find new information almost daily. So keeping that in mind I’m going to just jump in. What I write is from what I know. The other two descendents may have further supporting documentation, but for now this is what I have.

 

There are three of us.

Brian, Vancouver, Canada;

Miranda, Laguna Woods, California

Diana, England.

 

As far as we know, we are all directly descended from the same Hunter family who were born in China in the latter part of the 19th century.

 

Brian: (that’s me) is the grandson of Tobias Hunter who was born Sept 18, 1877

 

Miranda: is the great granddaughter of May Hunter who was born June 8, 1879

 

Diana: is the granddaughter of George Hunter who was born Mar 10, 1876

 

Tobias, May, George and another older brother, James, are the children of William Leyland Hunter, a tea merchant from Manchester England, referred to from this point as “WLH”

WLH had taken a position with WR Adamson in 1865. He was sent out to China as a tea inspector and settled in Foochow, in Fukien Province. Foochow is located approximately half way between Hong Kong and Shanghai on the eastern coast of China and at that time, was the major port for the export of tea.

 There are no birth records for Tobias, May, George or James Hunter.

 All were supposedly born in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong with possible exception of May, who’s British Passport is said to have shown her place of birth as “Foochow, China”, which had “British Treaty Port” status.

Hong Kong was a “British Crown Colony” which was higher up the ladder than a treaty port.

 WLH’s relationship to the Hunter children has been drawn from various other documents, which I will expand on here.

 WLH is listed on the marriage certificate of Tobias Hunter as father of groom and also on his death certificate as father of deceased.

 WLH is listed on the marriage certificate of George Hunter as father of groom, deceased.

 Tobias is the brother of George Hunter and maintained a close relationship.

 WLH is listed on the marriage certificate of May Hunter, as father of bride.

 James Hunter is connected to WLH by relationship to the other children, by childhood residence, by Hong Kong juror’s lists and by work history.

 Finally, with the exception of James, I have photographs and letters in my possession, and in some cases, firsthand knowledge of the relatives in question.

 The three of us have each done a DNA test with Ancestry.com which we all agreed could be questionable as to its findings, but interestingly, the three of us all had a common clue. It turns out we all carry an East Asian factor ( 3%-6% ) in our sequence.

*Update: Feb 15, 2017 

We now have the DNA results for Miranda’s mother and not surprisingly, her East Asian ethnic factor is 12%. When I say that this figure was expected, I should clarify, that we based it on the assumption that we could just work backwards. If Miranda was 6%, then her mother would be 12%, her mother, 25% etc, which would make May Hunter 50%. Looking at my own results of 4-6% Asian would mean my mother was 12% and her father, Tobias, May’s brother, would have been 25%, which is what the rumors implied. The glitch in this method is, why would May and Toby be different? Well, apparently, DNA doesn’t always pass down in nice neat increments. In fact, it can vary quite radically.

Another possibility is that Toby and May are only half siblings, and don’t share the same mother. The fact that they were raised by the one woman and shared in her assets when she passed away does not mean they are maternally blood related.

But we are making all our guesses based on our own DNA results, not theirs.

One further theory is that Miranda and her mother Jill’s higher Asian fraction could come from May’s husband Tom Cock, whose father Alexander came to Shanghai about the same time as WLH. He was of Scottish descent but was born in India. He died in Shanghai the same year his son Tom was born (1873) His widow is said to have survived him until 1926 (76 years of age) According to family, her name was Mary Lee and she was born in Scotland. 

My problem with this version is that it would make her 35 at the time she was widowed, with a newborn and another 2 year old child, in Shanghai, unable to speak the language, and needing to fend for herself and the children. Would she have been able to do this and remain alone for the next 40 years?

How did she and Alexander Cock come together? Did hay meet and marry in Calcutta, then come to Shanghai? Did he return from India to Scotland to take a wife? Did they then travel back to India or straight to Shanghai.

If so, she would have had very little time to familiarize herself with the customs of a new and strange land.