Tracing your roots

This grand­mother of four has found new­found cousins in her jour­ney to dis­cover more about her ancestors.

BY: Eleanor Yap

It is impor­tant to know where you came from and I am not talk­ing about from the womb. One woman has taken this task very seri­ously and has tracked her ances­tors as far back as late 1891. The 60-​year-​old Sin­ga­porean Amy Lam, who has six sib­lings, has trav­elled to far­away lands includ­ing the US, Bor­neo and China, to piece together her roots.

Through this ardu­ous task, she has learned a lit­tle bit about her­self, her roots and has new appre­ci­a­tion for this piece of his­tory that she will leave for her grand­chil­dren and their own families.

What made you decide to track down your fam­ily tree and when did you get started? 

When my two chil­dren used to ask ques­tions that I could not answer; the track­ing down must have sub­con­sciously started then. But I did not con­sciously doc­u­ment any­thing until 2000, when I returned to Sin­ga­pore to live and work. 

Are your sib­lings pitch­ing in? 

It seems like I am the only one inter­ested in geneal­ogy but every­one is help­ful with his or her ver­bal con­tri­bu­tion. The older aun­ties and uncles helped to tell sto­ries of their youth.

Ini­tially, how did you start on it and where did your search begin? Did you know exactly how you wanted to start or were you play­ing it by ear and see­ing where things led you? 

I started by just get­ting all the names in my father’s gen­er­a­tion, fol­lowed by my own gen­er­a­tion, con­tin­u­ing down to my chil­dren and now my grandchildren’s gen­er­a­tion. I dis­cov­ered that I have many cousins. I played it by ear in the begin­ning but I had to even­tu­ally be organ­ised to fit the branches and leafs in their cor­rect order. 

What about your mother’s generation?

Like many Chi­nese fam­i­lies, a woman mar­ries into the man’s fam­ily, and in my mother’s case, her fam­ily was in Hong Kong. My mother died when I was 15 and there­fore, the con­nec­tion with my pater­nal side was stronger since I grew up with my three pater­nal grand­moth­ers in Singapore.

Since you travel a whole lot dur­ing the year, do you find bal­anc­ing the work on your fam­ily tree and your love for trav­el­ling dif­fi­cult? How much time would you say you have spent on your fam­ily tree? 

No prob­lems at all. The fam­ily tree is my own choice and so are the work projects. I just find the time and bal­ance the choices in my life. It is dif­fi­cult to really pin down a time frame as when­ever I was vis­it­ing Sin­ga­pore when I was liv­ing over­seas, I would ask ques­tions. It was only about 10 years ago that I started to write the names down.

Doing all this would require a good sum of money. How much have you incurred in terms of accom­mo­da­tions, air­lines, etc? Have you had to dip into your own savings? 

I travel mainly on bud­get air­lines and gra­cious rel­a­tives accom­mo­date me with lodg­ings and food. Finan­cially inde­pen­dent more or less enables me to do what I wish to do. Again, it is not pos­si­ble to give any approx­i­mate cost as I some­times com­bine my work projects to fit in with my fam­ily research. 

Your search has taken you to far­away lands like Bor­neo and China. Can you share what has been your most inter­est­ing coun­try so far and what you have dis­cov­ered there about your family?

It is impos­si­ble for me to say which is the most inter­est­ing coun­try as every­where I go I find vari­eties of inter­ests, one as inter­est­ing as the other in dif­fer­ent ways. I dis­cov­ered that I have rel­a­tives scat­tered all over in Aus­tralia, Bor­neo, Canada, China, Eng­land, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nor­way and the US. I am sure there are more that I have not got­ten the oppor­tu­nity to research into yet. If I include pater­nal, mater­nal and sec­ond cousins, there must be about over 100.

How far have you traced your fam­ily tree? Do you plan to go even further? 

I have traced back to my great-​grandmother. I have no plans to trace fur­ther back unless the infor­ma­tion lands on my lap, like the painted porce­lain tiles of my great-​grand mother. The ances­tral vil­lage peo­ple returned three painted porce­lain tiles to my 14^th uncle who still holds the deed to the ances­tral hall and house in China (seen above) and I took pic­tures of them. One of the tiles is a pic­ture of my great-​grandmother. It was quite an eye-​opening trip, as I never knew that my grand­fa­ther com­manded such respect and wealth. There is no way I can afford the time, energy or finance to go so far back.

I am sure you have found many, many inter­est­ing stories/​history about your fam­ily. Any­thing you can share? 

Inter­est­ing only if there is an inter­est and in my case, too com­pli­cated too long and too many sto­ries to sum up. How­ever, I can share that my grand­fa­ther and grandun­cle were gen­er­ous and kind men. After mak­ing their for­tune in Bor­neo, they sent money to their vil­lage in China to hire teach­ers to teach the vil­lage chil­dren. They also donated coffins to fam­i­lies who could not afford them.

There are prob­a­bly some things you have found out that prob­a­bly don’t show your fam­ily in good light. Are you plan­ning to include those in your fam­ily tree book? 

What is in the book will only be a brief his­tory of the fam­ily busi­ness and a brief write-​up about the ances­tral vil­lage in China. The main pur­pose of this book is a direc­tory of names with their con­tacts so that the fam­ily can con­nect with each other.

How have you been able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the gos­sip and assump­tions, and the true facts? 

More or less I have. I feel one should not write any­thing with­out research­ing the facts.

Find­ing old records, track­ing peo­ple down who may have passed on or prod­ding peo­ple about things from a long time ago can be quite frus­trat­ing as firstly they may not remem­ber or the records may be long gone. How do you deal with this? 

You have to have tonnes of patience. My chil­dren and grand­chil­dren keep me going when the tree is not grow­ing in the direc­tion that it should. Other inter­ests include stay­ing in touch with friends, pho­tog­ra­phy and blog­ging (http://​amy​lamsg​.word​press​.com).

Did you man­age to re-​unite with any long-​lost fam­ily members? 

Yes and that is the best part of this research. I just dis­cov­ered that I have a sec­ond cousin also named Amy Lam who also mar­ried and divorced a Nor­we­gian! We are plan­ning to meet up in May in Los Ange­les, where she lives.

When do you plan to end or put the last chap­ter to bed on your fam­ily tree? Are you going to make copies for all your fam­ily members? 

There will never be an end to the fam­ily tree, as hope­fully some­one in the next gen­er­a­tion will be inter­ested to keep it going now that I have done some ground­work. I have plans to make copies, hope­fully before Decem­ber 2012 but will do so if the fam­ily can con­tribute to the print­ing costs or pay for the book. The fam­ily tree is large enough to be con­sid­ered a jun­gle when I com­plete my last chapter!

What have you learned through­out the whole process? 

I learned to have patience and more patience, and to lis­ten objectively. 

Can you share what resources you took advan­tage of for your research?

Libraries, Inter­net, inter­views by e-​mail and in person.

Your fam­ily now has a head start on the fam­ily tree, how do oth­ers get started? What pit­falls or chal­lenges should they be mind­ful of? 

If there is an inter­est, there will always be a way. Do the research care­fully and thor­oughly from what­ever and wher­ever you can find a start and then con­nect the dots bit by bit. This project is to show my respect to the ances­tors and will also give my descen­dants some knowl­edge of their heritage.

If you could do it all over again, what if any would you do differently? 

To have asked more ques­tions of my grand­par­ents and par­ents when I was younger.

** Amy Lam will be speak­ing at WINGS on April 28 at 2pm to 3pm on her other inter­est­ing jour­ney – hik­ing the Appalachian Trail and becom­ing the first Sin­ga­pore woman to do so. For more infor­ma­tion on the talk, call WINGS at 6250 1012.

(PHO­TOS: Cour­tesy of Amy Lam)