Akew NG [c.1820-c.1881] | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Akew NG [c.1820-c.1881]

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Submitted by David on Wed, 2016-05-18 13:24
Names
Given: 
Akew
Family: 
Ng
Sex: 
Female
Status: 
Deceased
Birth
Date: 
c.1820-01-01 (Year, Month, Day are approximate)
Death
Date: 
c.1881-01-01 (Year, Month, Day are approximate)

Dates of birth & death from her entry in the Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography, which notes that she was the protected woman of James B. Endicott from 1842 til some time before his marriage to an Englishwoman in 1852. Ng had several children with Endicott.

Ng Akew is one of the people who appears in the story of the old tenement house remains on Cochrane Street that Katty Law is investigating. She writes:

We have set up a Facebook Page "Searching for Ong Mo Kew" in order to collect more information about Ng Akew, the legendary chinese woman who gave Gutzlaff Street its nickname Hung Mo Kew Street.

https://www.facebook.com/ongmowkew/?fref=nf

We welcome friends of Gwulo.com to contribute your findings here in this forum or in our fb page. You can see the information we have collected on this fb page.

Rev Carl Smith wrote a chapter about Ng Akew in his book A Sense of History and also in two other books Women & Chinese Patriarchy (edited by Maria Jaschok & Suzanne Miers) and Merchants' Daughters (edited by Helen F. Siu).

We woud like to know more about the life of Ng Akew in Hong Kong. She owned (under a trust by Endicott) and lived in No. 2-10 Gutzlaff Street, where the remains of the old tenement houses are found today.

 

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Comments

Submitted by Jeremy Austin on Sun, 2016-05-22 20:36.

Seems that HB Endicott of Swire was not Akew's son - noted he passed away in 1894/5 at the age of 70

Submitted by David on Mon, 2016-05-23 13:50.

IDJ has posted a Swire News article which says that HB was brother to James Bridges Endicott.

It looks as though the family tradition was to give boys the mother's maiden name (Bridges) as their middle name.

The tradition continued, as James Bridges Endicott married Sarah Ann Russell, and in the 1884 Jurors list I can see a Robert Russell Endicott.

Submitted by seemex on Tue, 2020-01-21 04:40.

There is rumor that Henry B Endicott, took the identity of his uncle of the same name who died quite young 1817-1838. I believe he drowned during a voyage. It's said that Henry B was not 70 when he passed away, but rather, only 52. He lied about his age pretending to be older than he was. The info comes from Swires archive