When Simon Faithfull found out that Bruce Tunley would be traveling from New Zealand to Southern California to visit relatives in April 2011, he suggested that the get together and meet each other for the first time, and then travel by car to Saratoga in Northern California to meet their Chinese relatives, also for the first time. This is exactly what happened! We met at a Chinese restaurant for a meal of Peking Duck and other fine dishes, then got together at the home of Rose & K. T. Chang to share our photographs, keepsakes, and family stories. A good time was had by all.

I drew two giant family trees to show the family relationships, one each for the English and Chinese branches. Bruce and Simon are second cousins to each other, being the grandchildren of Mary and Luara Cornish, and they are both second cousins to the three Fei sisters, Ellen, Rose, and Bessie, who are the grandchildren of N. E. Cornish. (NE, Mary, and Luara were siblings in the family of Nicholas Cornish and Anne Frost.) You can find where everyone falls in the Fei family tree and the Who's Who family tree sketch.

Simon recounted his memory of NE's 90th birthday party in 1947, in which NE blew out all 90 lit candles on his birthday cake. Simon also showed us a metal shield awarded to NE by the Chinese government for his service at the Kiangnan Arsenal. About a month later, Al Fei discovered a detailed account of the occasion when this metal shield was presented to NE in 1912, A Function in the Kiangnan Arsenal, when NE was 55. This account was written by V. P. Suvoong (Shu Feng), the foster-father of my grandmother Elizabeth Cornish Fei. The article includes a photo of NE and the Kiangnan staff, and another that shows a group of Chinese and Foreign Ladies at the Function, which we think includes NE's niece Nelly Goddard at age 26.

-- Gray Chang