Hello all,
We're working on a research project involving a large and mysterious
photograph album brought to Canada from Europe at the end of the Second
World War. We think the photos (nearly 400 of them) were taken before 1935.
The majority are of scenes in China and we're guessing that they were taken
before the Westerners were exiled from that country in 1927. To judge from
the apparent age of a boy, Kirby Boyd, in the photos this might have been as
early as 1920. Dating is important to us as some of the photos seem to be
recording political events in that country and it would be good to identify
them.
We do not know who owned the album originally or who took the photographs.
We assume that they were someone other than the people photographed. There
is one candidate, however, whose name appears roughly scrawled on the
binding of the album: Clare "Slim" "Streak" Zalewski.
Unfortunately all attempts to track down this person have so far failed. We
believe he might have been Clarence J. Zalewski of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a
POW in Germany during WWII, but so far this is nothing but conjecture.
Whoever it was, he or she knew Kirby Boyd as that is the only name actually
attached to any photos. The boy is clearly identified as Kirby Boyd but
none of the other people are named. Some photos of houses are identified by
initials. These have led us to think that there is a connection in China
with Edward Lawrence Cockell - a big wheel in the British Legation at
Peking. Edward was married to a Katherine Florence, born in Melbourne in
about 1875, and we suspect that she may have been Kirby's aunt as his
maternal grandmother was Catherine Florence Newbery.
Edward had a brother, Lewis Vincent Cockell, whose house in England features
in the album. Another English house in the album belonged to Wilfred Ansell
Argent, a British merchant who travelled frequently to China and in the
early 1920s was the owner of a steamship on the River Yangtze! We do not
know what connection, if any, he may have had with either Zalewski, the
Boyds or the Cockells. A set of initials, C.C.S., associated with a
photograph of a house in Purley, England, offer us another clue which has so
far yielded no results.
Back to young Kirby: we have found some ships' manifests that suggest he was
later married to an Iris Anita, and they had a child Rosemary. We do not
know how often he visited or why or how long he spent in China but by 1958
he seems to have been an automotive executive travelling from England with
his mother to Canada. There we lose sight of him.
Any help that anyone can offer about the identity of Clare Zalewski (or the
Boyd, Argent, Cockell families) would be really appreciated.
Sandra Miller-Long
Family History Detective
YoreAncestry.com
248-756-8047
<mailto:smillerlong@wowway.com> smillerlong(a)YoreAncestry.com