Everything tagged: 13 Broadwood Road

The actual first name of Sonny Boy Melcher has never been recorded by the Olson family, to whom he was most closely related. He was the son of Evert Melcher, resident of Shanghai and of Ellen (Nellie) Melcher, youngest daughter of the retired Swedish tavern owner, John Olson snr and his Chinese wife, Ching Ah Fung (later Ellen Olson). Sonny Boy was youngest grandchild of the elder Olsons and probably born in 1917, as his mother was still named in 1916 passenger lists as Miss E. Olson. Sonny Boy appears in Hong Kong family photos that show John Olson snr with all his grandsons.

Nellie was the youngest daughter of John Olson and the fifth of his six children. She was step-sister of my grandmother, Hannah Warren. Her birth certificate gives her mother as Cheng A-Fung, who would later take Ellen as her Christian name, making two Ellens in the family. Nellie was born at 1 Ladder Street Terrace. The Ladies Directory gives her as living with her mother in Caine Road until at least 1907 after the birth of her nephew, Arthur, when her address is given at Charles and Hannah Warren's home at 2 Observatory Villas.

Ethel Olson appears in photographs with my 14 year old father, Reggie Warren, both in Singapore and in Hong Kong. She was married to my father's uncle, Charles Olson, and seems to have taken him under her wing to some extent after his own father, Charles Warren died. Although the family myth is of a complete rift between the Warrens and Olsons after the death of Charles Warren in 1923, a note from Ethel still exists congratulating Cicely Warren, wife of my uncle, Leslie Warren, on the birth of their daughter in 1927.