Everything tagged: Ching Ah Fung

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.

Cyril Warnes was the third and youngest child of Charles and Elizabeth Warnes. He was a great-grandson of John Olson snr. His mother died of cancer in 1917 and his father died on 7 August 1920 at the General Hospital, Singapore (info via moddsey). Cyril is listed as attending DBS in 1918 and he is shown as a smiling boy together with all the other grandsons of John Olson snr. in group family photos before John Olson's death.

To avoid confusion with the other John Olsons, this was the first son of John Olson snr. and my great-grandmother. Her name is given as Yau Kum on the birth certificate of my grandmother, Hannah Mabel Olson, John Olson’s second child by her. (He had changed his name from Jakobsson to Olson at the time of his son’s birth.) The gravestone inscription, which is very worn, reads “Sacred to the Memory of JOHN, infant son of J. and Y. Olson.