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| Arthur Lee circa 1975 |
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| Melodie's first Christmas 1970 |
It's been
nearly nine years since my dad passed away from cancer. He spent a lot of time
researching his family history and had compiled a lot of information on various
distant relatives, and was able to visit his ancestral village and see the family home in 2006.
The visit
rekindled my interest in genealogy that had waxed and waned throughout the
years, but my summer visits were never long enough to delve into his files.
Written and
computer files were all lost in the Carr Fire on the evening of July 26, 2018. The
only record I had was on the Geni website - the names in a family tree. I
started my own research through emailed queries to my mom, my mom's brother,
and my dad's sister. Later, I contacted distant cousins and relations through a
Mississippi Delta Chinese Facebook group to find information on my maternal side of the family.
After finding
the 1940 Census records for my maternal grandparents and learning about a
collection of files in the Seattle National Archives created during the Chinese
Exclusion Act, I decided to take up my dad's work culminating in a written
family history of first, my maternal, Fong grandparents, and later, my paternal,
Lee grandparents, based on records found and recollections of my relatives.
