May 2011

Dear Madeleine,

Well where do I begin?! The older I get the more I am interested in history – so let me give you the history of how I found you.

As you probably know, Nicholas Edward Cornish (always known to my side of the family as “NE”), spent many years, working for the Chinese government and was in charge of an armory in Shanghai. During his time there, he fathered two children by two different ladies – in addition he had an English wife and a daughter in the UK – he was a busy man!

NE lived to be 91 years old and I remember, as a small boy of 7, going to his 90th birthday party. He must have been quite well then, because I remember him blowing all his 90 candles out! He told my aunt, who was looking after him in his old age, of his Chinese children, and she told my cousin Edward in about 1960; he thought that all the rest of the family knew of this and so didn’t speak of it until 1997, when he was visiting my mother and Jean, another cousin. From then on we all knew that we had” Chinese” relations, but had no idea how to find them! We only knew of one birth, which subsequently turned out to be Elizabeth Cornish. Though we knew of her existence, we had no idea how to contact her descendants. We had no knowledge of your great grandfather, John Smith’s, existence until last year!

In December 2009, a cousin of mine’s daughter (Alison Bailey, your 3rd Cousin), who speaks Mandarin and teaches Chinese Literature in Vancouver, found (in Mandarin)  Elizabeth Cornish’s son’s obituary – this was John Fei, who was a second-cousin of  your mother and also one of mine).  Alison passed on details of the obituary, together with the name of one of his son’s. I spent a long time looking fruitlessly for this son (the name was wrong in the obituary!). I eventually found the correct names of John Fei’s sons in an English language obituary and managed to contact them.

Since then, there has been a lot of email communication between the Cornish descendants, who are living all over the world! Elizabeth Cornish’s grandson, Gray Chang, has done a lot of work on their family tree, and it was from him that we all learned of John Smith’s existence.  Eventually, last month I met up with  Bruce Tunley (whose existence I only discovered in the email conversation), another of your mother’s second cousins (he lives in New Zealand). We went up to the San Francisco area, where most of Elizabeth Cornish’s descendants now live. 

It was a magnificent “reunion” of lost relatives and Bruce and I received a wonderful welcome. We stayed the night with Rose Chang, one of Elizabeth Cornish’s daughters.  She had once been in contact with your mother, Grace and still had the address in Monaco, where your parents lived.  I understand that you also have cousins in Australia; Bessie (Rose’s sister) had an email address for Robyn Milne (who is also the great granddaughter of John Smith). Bruce and I agreed between ourselves that he would try and find our Australian cousins and I would try and contact our French cousins. So this is how I found you!  

About me:

I am a retired Medical Doctor (anaesthetist) and Pharmaceutical Executive (I am 70 years old), and, though brought up in the UK, I have spent most of my life in other countries, Germany, the Netherlands and the USA. I have been here in San Diego in California for 21 years. Your mother was my second cousin, so that makes you my second cousin once removed.  To make it easier, my grandmother was the sister of NE Cornish, your great grandfather. My grandmother had 3 children, Nell, Ted and Nick (my father). 

Nell had 2 daughters, Beryl and Jean (my cousins); Beryl had 2 daughters and a son – one of her daughters is Alison Bailey, who speaks Mandarin and works in the Center for Chinese Research in the University of British Columbia in Vancouver; Jean had a son and a daughter, and her daughter, (Janet Greenwell), is the member of the family who has done the most research on the English Cornishes. Ted had two boys (Edward and Nick).  My father had one son (me!) and a daughter (my sister Jane). I have 4 daughters, one in Dubai (married with one son), and one in Scotland (married with 5 sons and 1 daughter!).  Jane and her two sons and 3 grandchildren all live in South Africa; Jane and one son living in Capetown, and the other son in Johannesburg.

I am now retired and I spend some weeks in Europe each summer – I still have a cottage in England (excellently looked after by my ex-wife), which I visit each year. I also spend 6 weeks or more in France each year!  I have a share in a 15 meter Dutch barge on the rivers and canals in Burgundy – it is normally based in Auxerre.

Phew! I hope some of that makes sense?!  No doubt you will pass this along to your relatives, and I hope that some day we can all meet up.

All the very best,

Simon