The search for my mystery ancestor – a guest post by Jennifer Jang

In this post I’m delighted to share Jennifer’s story. I love how she starts with almost no information and slowly gathers enough clues to puzzle out the identity of the man known only as Dai Gung.

Search for Dai Gung, by Jennifer Jang

My story started with a photo. It was a picture of an older man and older woman. An elderly couple, it looked like.

I had seen a number of family photos, some faces I recognized. For the unfamiliar faces, I looked at any scribblings on the back, then asked my dad, “Who is this?”

He said, “This is Dai Gung.” Dai Gung is a kinship term for “maternal grandfather” but in this case, its meaning has been extended to include men of that generation. I pressed for details. Dad said he was a Chow family relative – he had a son named Tai Chow, and Tai had a son named Garry. Dad said Dai Gung died in 1957 in Vancouver, at the age of ninety-six.

Dad said that when he was nine, Dai Gung was walking towards him. He didn’t recognize my dad until they were quite close. Dai Gung apologized for not seeing him as he was old.

I was curious to see what I could find for this Chow relative with no name.

The search begins with the BC Archives

The BC archives genealogy site has death registration information up to 2002. I went looking online in the BC Archives Genealogy lookup. I looked for any male Chows (and any variation of that name) with an age range of ninety to one hundred. I found quite a few possibilities but the informants weren’t anyone I recognized so I remained unconfident I had found the man known as Dai Gung.

I tried the son Tai Chow. And like Dai Gung, Tai Chow produced a few results but none seemed familiar.

My dad had said the grandson Garry was older than him, born circa 1940. I tried searching for Garry Chow and didn’t find anyone with that name. With these results, Garry could still be living or could have died after 2002.

I found nothing. It was time to look elsewhere.

The search continues with the General Register of Chinese Immigration

With nil results on the BC archives genealogy site, my next attempt was looking for Chows on the Register of Chinese Immigrants to Canada – UBC Open Collection. From this spreadsheet (see below), Robert Louie pulled all the entries for Chow men born around my great-grandfather Loo Sing Chow’s time, from the village of Ai Kong, Pon Yue District, Guangdong, China.

Here is a map of Pon Yue from Wikipedia.

I thought that if Dai Gung was a Chow relative, he could be the same age and from the same village. I noted the Chinese Immigration (C.I.) numbers and names from the UBC spreadsheet. I then used the Genealogy for Asian Canadians Transcription Project lookup tool. This tool, built by volunteers in the group, is an alternate tool for Chinese Canadian genealogical research. I also used the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) Collection Search to find my answers.

I found nothing with the tool and Collection Search. I was stuck.

The search continues at my parents

I had a breakthrough on 6 Jul 2024, when I was house-sitting at my parents. My dad told me I could look at the Chow family tree on his computer. I didn’t think Dai Gung would be in the tree but I saw the names Tai Chow and Gary Chow and realized he had recorded them in the tree.

I finally found out the relationship between Dai Gung and my Chow family: he was a first cousin of my great-grandfather Loo Sing Chow. Dai Gung’s name was Ching Chow, he was born circa 1875 and died circa 1971. His wife (no name, no birth details) died in 1957.

Aha! My dad had conflated the wife’s date of death with Dai Gung’s age at death.

I confirmed that Dai Gung had a son named Tai Chow, and discovered two other children: Lam Chow and Seung Chow. I could also see that Tai Chow had a son named Gary – not Garry as we’d thought – and that Gary was born circa 1938.

I learned enough to go back to the BC Archives.

Back to the BC Archives

With the new information, I immediately went digging again in the BC Archives when I got back home. I was cautiously optimistic when I found a death record for a Lowe Toys Choo who died in 1958. The husband listed was Ching Kue Choo.

Then I found a death record for a Kwan Tai Choo. The father was listed as Ching Kue Choo (the same spelling as the Choo female) and the informant was a son named Gary Choo. The handwriting was so messy I asked my husband to verify because I didn’t trust my interpretation.

I tried again to find a death record for a Ching Kue Choo. No luck.

The C.I.44 Collection

A CI44 was a registration document required of all Chinese people living in Canada, be they Canadian-born or not. The deadline to register with the federal government was June 30, 1924. It was a one-page document detailing the particulars of a person, including their birthplace, the amount of head tax they paid, facial characteristics, and marital status. A photo was attached. I then turned back to the list of Chows, culled from the UBC spreadsheet. I looked for anyone Chow/Choo born around 1875. I had assumed that Dai Gung had come during the head tax time and that he would have a CI44 since he was old when he died in Vancouver.

I noted all the Chow names with their C.I. numbers (CI5s, CI36s) on a piece of paper. I used the C.I.9 Transcription Tool to pull up any C.I.9s. The photos in the C.I.9s did not seem to match the photo I had of Dai Gung, aka Ching Chow aka CHOO Ching.

I went to bed, disappointed.

Inspiration strikes… in bed

That night, I realized I could do a search at LAC because I had a name. I got out of bed immediately. And so I inputted Choo Ching and thirteen results popped up.

The results I looked at more carefully were a GRCI entry for ‘choo ching kew’ and a CI9 for ‘Choo Ching Keu’. There were no digital images so I noted all the CI numbers. I then found the pertinent T-reels on the Heritage Canadiana website and looked through the reels. I also inputted the C.I. numbers into the C.I.9 Transcription Project tool.

Success at last.

I located seven documents (links provided):

• the GRCI entry for Choo Ching Kew
• the CI36 for Choo Ching Keu
• three CI9s for Choo Ching Keu – for the years 1915, 1920, and 1932
• the CI44 card and form for Choo Ching Ken

I learned Ching Kue Choo was born circa 1885.

With this new year of birth, I tried the BC Archives again for a death registration record, inputting ‘Cho*‘ for last name, selecting male, giving an age range of 95-99 but no date range. There were fifteen results. I looked more closely at anything resembling Ching Kue Choo. The winning result was Ching Few Choo. I corroborated the wife’s maiden name – Quon Choy LOW – and concluded it was a reasonable match with Toys Lowe. Also the informant was the son, Kwan Tai Choo, aka Tai Chow.

When I started, I wanted to find another Chow family relative who paid the head tax. The man known as Dai Gung was actually Ching Kue Choo, born in 1886 and died in 1981, aged ninety-five. He had a long life. I learned he had only one wife and that he was a farmer from Ai Kong, Panyu, Guangdong. He immigrated in 1909 and paid the maximum tax – $500 – which must have been an enormous burden to repay He lived during the Exclusion Era and travelled three times to see his family, siring a child with each visit. His Canadian reunification with his wife could only happen after Exclusion was repealed in 1947. I went looking for a nameless mystery man found in a photo and I found the story of his life.

And that is the story of Dai Gung, aka Ching Chow aka CHOO Ching.

Afterword, by Linda Yip

In Chinese Canadian genealogy, we are both constrained and bolstered by the laws of the day. In the case of Jennifer’s ancestor known only as a title – Dai Gung – she was able to piece together a family tree, family story, a photo, plus records from sites including the BC Genealogy lookup, CRKN’s Heritage Canadiana, Library and Archives Canada, plus tools from UBC and my group Genealogy for Asian Canadians to not only put a name to the face, but also fill in the unknown story of his life. The Chinese Immigration Act (1885-1947) laws which created such strife for so many is today an invaluable set of records for Chinese Canadian genealogy.

The title Dai Gung is probably 太公, or maternal great-grandfather. This is doubly confusing because Choo Ching was not Jennifer’s Dai Gung, but the title stuck and that’s how he came to be known in the family.

Thank yous

Thank you to Jennifer for writing the piece, and for meeting with me to polish it up. Also thanks to Robert Louie, for his expertise in collating the list of possible men surnamed Chow, born about 1876, from the Ai Kong village in Panyu.