Tag Archives: Eng Sing

More about Shaving Feasts

photo, Shaving Feast
Photo of Eng Sing
Cropped photo of Eng Sing from family photo, ca. 1914, Chinese Exclusion Act case files, RG 85, National Archives-Seattle, Eng Sing file, Box 225, Case 4280/10-15.

[Eng Sing has a standard Chinese haircut for that time period. Traditionally the baby’s head was completely shaved except a little topknot in the crown of his head. A “Shaving Feast” may have been held for Eng Sing when he was one-month old. At the feast an elaborate meal would be served for many guests. An article, from a Caucasian prospective, published on 3 March 1912 in the Dallas Morning News describes a feast with a fourteen-course meal with turtle, bacon, roast duck, eel, bamboo sprouts, pigeon, abalone and other exotic foods.]

See “A Chinese Shaving Feast,” Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX), 3 March 1912, Section 3, page 3; Newspaper. Online at GenealogyBnk.com, http://bit.ly/1Kmmgfw, accessed 9 Sept 2015.

Family Portrait – Eng Moon’s family

Group Photo,
Portrait of Eng Moon's family
Portrait of Eng Moon’s family ca. 1914, Chinese Exclusion Act case files, RG 85, National Archives-Seattle, Eng Sing file, Box 225, Case4280/10-15.

Eng Sing (on the right) was about three years old when this photograph was taken ca. 1912 with his mother and brother. Eng Sing, age 13, arrived in Seattle on 26 November 1925 on the SS President Jefferson. His father, a merchant, was unable to prove his relationship to his alleged son so Eng Sing was deported on 4 February 1926.

[Fake backgrounds were popular in portraits at this time but this is the first time I have seen a fake dog in a photograph.]
[Note traditional haircuts on the boys.]

Seufert Bros. Co., The Dalles, Ore. Cannery Employee List, 1909

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Seufert Bros employee list 1909
Seufert Bros. Co, The Dalles, Ore. , employee list, 1909, Chinese Exclusion Act case files, RG 85, National Archives-Seattle, Wong Fook file, Portland, Box 5, Case 1700.

This is a 1909 list of Seufert Brothers Cannery employees. It includes their certificate of identity numbers. They were probably all living the bunkhouse that was destroyed by a fire on 12 April 1909.