THE LIFE
OF
YEE JOCK LEONG

My great-grandmother burned a lot of my great-grandfather's belongings after his death. I assume we lost quite a bit of family information in the flames.

Very few documents survived the flames, such as letters written in classical Chinese.  I cannot make much sense out of what is left, but I can fill in a few details of his life from what little evidence remains. For instance, the two cards above are -- I am told -- both his and that one is a birth name (presumably the one at left) and the other is a married name.  He often went by the name of Yee Jackson, which causes much confusion as  Jackson is listed as his surname in some official records.

So now I will proceed with what I know of his life. . .

Yee Jock Leong was born on January 15, 1884, at 741 Sacramento Street in San Francisco.  I know this from what is apparently a certified copy of his birth certificate that he used to prove his citizenship on a trip to China from November 4, 1905, to April 29, 1908.  His parents were Yee Kim Wo and Wong Shee.

His primary occupation was a laundryman.  In one of his address books I found what might be draft text for an advertisement. He also owned a kennel in Dayton, Ohio, where he lived the last 20 years of his life.

He died on December 4, 1936, in Dayton.  According to his death certificate, he died of acute phthysis -- a complication of tuberculosis.  Obituaries were published in both Dayton newspapers, The Dayton Daily News and the Dayton Journal.  He was buried in Calvary Cemetery.

He made at least two trips to China.  One was the trip from November 1905 to April 1908 documented on his birth certificate.  Another was from July 1914 to July 1915.  Several items document his 1914-15 trip: an immigration letter, an identification card, a passenger card, a health inspection card and a train ticket for the return trip from the West coast.  He was living in Irwin, Pennsylvania, at the time he left in 1914-1915.

I don't know the purpose of the trips.  The first one may have been to get married -- several of his letters suggest he had a wife and children in China.  The second may have been to return to China to bury a relative as a 1913 exhumation receipt suggests.

He married Myrtle Mae Robinson, an orphan of Chinese and Mexican descent, on December 17, 1915.  The marriage presumably took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or thereabouts.  I don't have any documents about the marriage right now, but I do know that my great-grandmother, who was born in Santa Barbara, California, in 1892 or so, was raised by a couple of sisters in Ann Arbor.  Yee Jock Leong's address books contain several Robinson/Robison addresses in the Ann Arbor area.

He and my great-grandmother had three children: My grandmother, Yee Yutseul Jackson, born on November 5, 1920, in Dayton; a son, Yee Poy Quon Jackson, born on February 28, 1924, in Dayton and died on December 30, 1925, in Dayton; and another daughter, Yee Yet Yut Moy Jackson, born on February 20, 1926, in Dayton and died on March 17, 1926, in Dayton.  The two children who died were buried in Woodland Cemetery.