a certificate in accordance with the...

Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume Six, 2013

南方華裔研究雜誌, 第六卷, 2013

Powe: A Certificate in Accordance with the Act 114

A Certificate in Accordance with the Act

© 2013 Brad Powe

Abstract: The twenty-eighth of February 2012 was the 150th anniversary of the cut-off date for

nearly 13,000 residents of New South Wales to register under the Chinese Immigrants Regulation

and Restriction Act of 1861. The author's great-great grandfather “Apow” (Gwok Ah Poo, also

known as George Harper) received a parchment certificate, numbered 1311, on the Tambaroora

goldfield. While the National Museum of Australia may have one of these certificates, and the

National Archives of Australia holds another two, the vast majority of these durable documents

appear to have disappeared. A public request for information on other examples in private hands

(published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, 18 February 2012) confirmed the existence

of only one more of these potentially informative documents.

Keywords: Ah Poo, Tambaroora, Shoalhaven, Parramatta, Chinese Immigrants Regulation and

Restriction Act, certificate

Introduction

The twenty-eighth of February 2012 was the 150th anniversary of the cut-off date for

nearly 13,000 residents of the colony of New South Wales to apply for a “certificate of

exemption” under the Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act of 1861.

The colonial government’s legislative response to the Lambing Flat riots of 1861 was

to institute An Act to Regulate and Restrict the Immigration of Chinese (25 Vic. No. 3) on

22 November that year. Despite the violent agitation against the Chinese population on

the goldfields, the Act did not seek to overly restrict those already in the colony – but it did

apply punitive costs on any future arrivals.

In order to distinguish those Chinese already resident from those who may have

wished to join them and exempt these residents from payment of the requisite £10 fee,

Section 8 of the Act required that:

All Chinese within the Colony of New South Wales shall on or before the

twenty-eighth day of February one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two

apply to the nearest Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner for a

certificate and such Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner shall

deliver to any Chinese so applying a parchment certificate; which shall

bear on the face of it the name of the Chinaman applying and the

signature of the Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner granting

such certificate and all other matters which the Government may deem

necessary and the holder of such certificate shall be exempted from

payments under this Act.

The Act specified that the certificates be on parchment (i.e. calf skin or lamb skin), a

material that is much more durable than paper. The parchment certificate in the author’s

possession measures roughly 20.5 × 17.5 cm (8 × 7 inches).1

Apow’s Certificate

This certificate, issued under the Act and numbered 1311, was received by “Apow”2 on

the Tambaroora goldfield, near Hill End in central-western New South Wales, on the “28th

day of February, A.D. 1862”. The certificate (figure 1) continues to be held by the

descendants of the recipient, later known as Ah Poo, Gwok Ah Poo, George Ah Poo and

finally George Harper.

1 There has been differential shrinkage of the parchment; originally it would have been the traditional

paper size for official documents known as “Foolscap quarto”: see British Association of Paper

Historians, “Old English Paper Sizes,” baph.org.uk/reference/papersizes.html, viewed 5 June 2013. 2 A variety of transliterations of the Cantonese honorific 阿 appear in English-language documents

before the more familiar form “Ah” was settled on by the late 1870s: the Beechworth Ah Poo (see

footnote 21) appears as “Appoo” in some sources, for example.




Joseph Cox, the local Gold Sub-Commissioner, would have devoted considerable time to

the completion of some 1600 similar certificates – the number of Chinese recorded as

being on the Turon River goldfields in the 1861 Census – especially as the reverse is

inscribed with biographical and biometric information.

Figure 1. Certificate 1311 of “Apow” received at Tambaroora, 28 February 1862 (Author’s collection)

The reverse of the form (figure 2) is pre-printed with the legend “DESCRIPTION of

[blank] mentioned in the Certificate on the other side:—” and the following information

was added by Sub-Commissioner Cox:

Apow

Country Canton

Age 20 yrs

From English ship

Height 5' 7"

After 150 years, the ink is very faded, and the certificate itself has been repeatedly

folded, rendering the second and third lines largely illegible to the naked eye; until

recently the fourth line was thought to read “Brown eyes, black hair” — a common but

hardly useful description!3

However, recent examination under ultraviolet light has

revealed the additional details about Apow shown above, and they have proven to be

valuable for cross-referencing with other records.

3 The physical description of Ah Hang (see note 13) is "Height 5 feet 5, Hair black, Eyes brown.” Kate Bagnall,

private communication, 19 June 2013.




Figure 2. English text on the reverse of Certificate 1311

The other end of the reverse of the certificate has been inscribed with five Chinese

characters in an unknown hand (figure 3). These have been identified as “咸豐拾壹年”

(xian feng shi yi nian), meaning the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Xianfeng of the

Qing Dynasty.4 He was the husband of Empress Dowager Cixi and ruled between 1850

and 1861. Although the Xianfeng Emperor died on 22 August 1861, news of his demise

had presumably not reached the Chinese community of Tambaroora by the end of

February 1862 when Apow’s certificate was issued. This may not be surprising, given that

the sea journey from Canton (Guangzhou) or Amoy (Xiamen) to Sydney typically took

more than two months, followed by the overland journey to the Turon.5

Figure 3. Chinese text on the reverse of Certificate 1311

The Rarity of Records

One might reasonably assume from the social tensions and degree of moral panic

exhibited by the Lambing Flats rioters that the colonial government’s legislation could well

have been more restrictive than just the issuing of a free certificate of residence, for

example, by creating centralised registers or restricting the movement of Chinese

residents. However, Premier Charles Cowper6 appears to have been trying to achieve a

balanced response between the xenophobes of the goldfields and the liberal humanism

demonstrated elsewhere in colonial society.7

4 Louisa Cheung, private communication, 10 June 2011.

5 There were two routes to the Turon fields, either via Bathurst or along the Mudgee Road; both were

about 280 kilometres (175 miles) long and would have taken two to three weeks to walk. 6 For the character of the premier, see John M. Ward, “Cowper, Sir Charles (1807–1875),” Australian

Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University),

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cowper-sir-charles-3275/text4967, viewed 31 May 2013. 7 For an account of Cowper’s appearance at Lambing Flat, see “Australian Reminiscences: The

Lambing Flat Riots,” Singleton Argus, 26 February 1910, p. 2.




In response to the author’s surmise regarding the extent of records created under

the 1861 Act, an archivist with the State Records Authority of New South Wales pointed

out that the legislation:

does not state that a register should be kept at either the local level or

centrally. If the Act does not specify that one should be kept it is not

reasonable to assume that one would have been. It is clear from ...

section 8 of the Act that it was the local Clerks of Petty Sessions or ...

Gold Commissioner who provided the certificates applied for by the

Chinese. There are a few surviving records of Courts of Petty Sessions

and a few also of the Gold Commissioners from this period, but I cannot

see any specifically relating to the 1861 Act. A few descriptions mention

recording numbers of Chinese, rather than recording their names.8

The absence of a centralised register was effectively confirmed by the sole response

to a public request by the author for other private holders of similar certificates to come

forward.9 Ken Rolph of Blacktown, New South Wales, is the current holder of a certificate

numbered 62/70 acquired by his maternal ancestor “John Watt of Newington, Parramatta

River, Police district of Sydney, dated 21 February 1862 [and] Signed by Henry Connell,

Clerk of Petty Sessions”.10

John Watt was born in Amoy circa 1825 and arrived in the

colony in 1841 to work on John Blaxland’s Newington Estate.11

Henry Connell’s

numbering system may reflect the stable employment and domicile of the local Chinese,12

counterpointing the flux of gold-seekers elsewhere in the Colony.

Apart from one example held by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and

two13

held by the National Archives of Australia in Sydney14

, the two certificates described

here are currently the only known survivors of the nearly 13,000 that could have been

issued; there are apparently none in the collection of the State Records Authority of New

South Wales.15

Some were probably lost, stolen or destroyed, but the majority

presumably returned to China with their recipients. Logic suggests that there would have

been a trade in the certificates, which could presumably be used to evade the impost

applied to later immigrants – which rapidly increased from the initial £10 fee. In any case,

the loss of personal information16

that could have been gleaned from this lost resource is

cause for considerable regret.

From Apow to Ah Poo

Returning to the recipient of Certificate 1311, family legend has it that Apow had little

success on the Tambaroora–Hill End goldfields and later tried his luck in the Braidwood

district. The next documents retained by the family are from 1883 under the name Ah Poo,

8 Janette Pelosi, State Records Authority of NSW, private communication, 21 February 2012.

9 Brad Powe, “RSVP”, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 February 2012.

10 Ken Rolph, private communication, 11 December 2012.

11 Jack Brook, From Canton with Courage (Sydney: Self-published, 2010), pp. 128–30.

12 It has been suggested that Connell’s numbering system could be read as “number 70 issued in [18]62”, rather

than “number 62 out of a total of 70”. In the absence of certificates numbered 62/71 or 63/70, either

interpretation is tenable. 13

Those of Ah Hang (no. 211, issued 22 February 1862 at an illegible location) and of Ah Fong (unnumbered,

issued 11 April 1862 at Uralla by Sub-Gold Commissioner Frederick Dalton) who was then resident on the

Rocky River goldfield. National Archives of Australia, Sydney: SP115/10. 14

Julie Stacker and Peri Stewart, Chinese Immigrants and Chinese–Australians in New South Wales (Canberra:

National Archives of Australia, 2004), p. 20. 15

Christine Yeats, State Records Authority of NSW, private communication, 9 March 2012. 16

In John Watt’s case, the description on the reverse is: “Trade – Labourer – Age 38 years. Height. 5 feet 5½

inches. Remarks – 2 black scars on right wrist – mole on under lid of left eye.” Brook, From Canton with

Courage, p. 129.




but his movements can be traced from other records17

cross-referenced against the notes

recorded by Joseph Cox on his certificate.

In November 1864, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the previous day’s court

proceedings in Braidwood:

The Quarter Sessions commenced to-day, before Judge Meymott. The

following cases were disposed of:– Ah Poo, for unlawfully wounding A Ti,

at Araluen, was sentenced to twelve months.18

The sentence was to be served in the Braidwood Gaol, where Ah Poo had been held

since the end of September.19

The circumstances that led up to the assault are not known,

although inter-clan rivalries are reported to have been a source of significant friction on

the rich Araluen goldfield.20

There were at least two, and possibly three, individuals known as Ah Poo in New

South Wales in the first half of the 1860s21

; indeed, two are recorded as having been

committed to the Braidwood Gaol between 1862 and 1866. Although it cannot be a

certain identification, the gaol’s Entrance Book records that inmate Number 240, Ah Poo,

was 22 years old in 1864, 5 feet 6¾ inches in height (almost certainly measured in his

shoes), and had arrived on an E[nglish] ship.22

This information matches that recorded on

certificate 1311.

Reference has already been made to the multiple folds of certificate 1311. Figure 1

clearly shows one set of rectilinear folds in what we would consider the “normal” pattern

(i.e. folding the opposite edges together), but this pattern overlays an earlier set formed

on the diagonals that would have created a rectangular packet roughly 6.5 × 2.5 cm

across. As such a packet would have been effectively leak-proof, it is tempting to imagine

it folded around a few grains of alluvial gold, sealed with a dressmaker’s pin (the holes

from which are visible on the right-hand edge near the word “Tambaroora”), and

concealed in the secret compartment of a waist-belt!

Having served his sentence, and perhaps alienated himself from his community,

Ah Poo presumably worked his way down the Shoalhaven River, the banks of which were

also gold rich.23

It is clear, however, that he eventually realised he would never make his

fortune from gold; by 1876 he was working as a “gardener” on the estate of Alexander

Berry at Numbaa (near Nowra on the south coast of New South Wales).

Alexander Berry is well known as one of the first employers of indentured Chinese

labour in New South Wales; their contracts were bought up to replace the convicts he

could no longer obtain following the end of transportation to the colony in 1840. The first

eight Chinese men engaged by Berry (off the Spartan in May 1852) were all from Amoy,

and included a man whose name was recorded as “Yoo Tick”.24

17

The searchable digitised newspapers and other documents available via the National Library of

Australia’s Trove database (http://trove.nla.gov.au) are a particularly valuable resource and the source

of most of the references to newspapers herein. 18

“Telegraphic Messages,” Sydney Morning Herald, 22 November 1864, p. 7. 19

Deposition Register Index, p. 207, Series Number NRS 849, Item 1, Microfilm Reel 2760, State

Records NSW. 20

Barry McGowan, “From Fraternities to Families: The Evolution of Chinese Life in the Braidwood

District of New South Wales (NSW), 1850s-1890s,” Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies 2 (2008):

pp. 18–20. Araluen is about thirty kilometres south of Braidwood and was the field where the well-known

Quong Tart (梅光達 Mei Guangda) made his fortune before moving to Sydney. 21

There was also an Ah Poo in Victoria at this time, the tragically short-lived member of the Victorian Police at

Beechworth whose recruitment may have owed something to an encounter with bushrangers just before the

assault in Araluen. See “Crime in Victoria”, Empire, 16 September 1864, p. 4. 22

Entrance Book [Braidwood Gaol], Series Number 2044, 4/5523, Microfilm Reel 2329, State Records NSW.

Note that there is a transcription error in Ah Poo’s height in the database that is available online at

http://members.pcug.org.au/~ppmay/braidwood.htm. 23

There was also a large Chinese mining community at the now vanished village of Yalwal at this time. 24

Robyn Florance, The Chinese in Shoalhaven (Nowra: Shoalhaven Historical Society, 2004), pp. 5–7.

“Yoo Tick” (possibly the Fujianese name 游德 Yu Be) had morphed into “Utick” by the mid-1860s, but

also appears as “Utio” and “Manni” (perhaps 曼妮 Man Ni) in some records.




From Ah Poo to Harper

Ah Poo married Emma Ann Lowe in January 1876, at the Wesleyan church in nearby

Terara.25

Born in Sydney in 1857, Emma had been raised by her half-sister Louisa Lowe

since being orphaned at the age of seven. Louisa herself had married Berry’s former

indentured labourer Manni “John” Utick in March 1865.26

Ah Poo and Emma’s first child arrived in 1877; the short-lived Elizabeth’s father was

shown as the labourer “George” Ah Poo. This birth record is the first appearance of the

name George, a convenient anglicisation of his Chinese family name 郭 (Guo),27

variously transliterated from Cantonese as Gwok, Kwok and Gok.28

The first son, Herbert William, was registered in Milton (near Ulladulla, the next big

town on the coast south of Nowra) in 1878, followed by Lily May in 1880 and Jessie in

1882. The family was then resident at Lake Conjola, some fifteen kilometres north of

Milton; it is possible that Chinaman’s Island in the lake was named for George.

It was at this point that Emma clearly decided it was time for the father of her

children to acquire the rights of a British subject. She was assisted in this application by

Thomas Hobbs J.P., to whom she had turned when the Milton Clerk of Petty Sessions

professed ignorance of the procedure. Hobbs undertook the necessary paperwork,

requesting that all correspondence be sent to his property Avenel.29

In his 1882 “Memorial” (naturalisation application), which Hobbs both filled in and

witnessed, George was described as a “native of Canton”,30

and claimed to have arrived

in New South Wales on the ship Amazon in 1862.31

His reason for desiring naturalisation

is given as:

That your Memorialist Wishes to hold Land, and He is Married. [and]

Whishes (sic) his Family to be Children of a Naturalised Parent.32

In February 1883, the “farmer” Ah Poo took the Oath of Allegiance and collected his

Certificate of Naturalization from the Milton Bench of Magistrates (figure 4) in exchange

for the prescribed fee of £1.

25

Marriage Registration of Ah Poo and Emma Ann Lowe, 1876, NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and

Marriages, 4140/1876. The spelling “Terrara” was also used until the 1930s. 26

Marriage Registration of Manni Utick and Louisa Lowe, 1865, NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and

Marriages, 3192/1865. 27

Coincidentally, the name George was routinely abbreviated to “Geo.” in print until the second half of the

twentieth century. 28

Ah Poo belonged to the extended family that included the three brothers who founded the Wing On

corporation in Sydney and the father of the late Mavis Gok Yen (born in Western Australia). The “Guoc”

variant that can be found in some documents is the result of a late-1980s translation by a

Sino-Vietnamese colleague of the author. 29

In his obituary, Thomas Hobbs – later the “Senior Magistrate” of the district and a substantial

landholder, including property around Lake Conjola – is described as having been “a leading figure in

the community ... and one of the progressive sort.” Shoalhaven Telegraph, 19 December 1906

(transcribed to the rootsweb mailing list for south-east NSW by Wendy Kuzela on 11 January 2007 (see

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/AUS-NSW-SE/2007-01/1168454886). 30

From Shekki (石岐 Shiqi) – or perhaps nearby – in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province. 31

Ah Poo may actually have been in New South Wales for some time. If he arrived in January or early

February 1862, he should have heard of the Xianfeng Emperor’s death before setting sail. Furthermore,

no ship named Amazon is recorded as having arrived in Sydney between June 1853 and March 1862

(see State Records Authority of NSW, Shipping Master's Office: Passengers Arriving 1855-1922,

CGS 13278). He may have forgotten the details of his arrival by the time he applied for naturalisation

twenty years later, or perhaps the actual name of the ship never mattered as much as its Englishness. 32

Ah Poo’s “Memorial or Application for a Certificate of Naturalization,” Office of the Colonial Secretary,

State Records Authority of NSW.




Figure 4. Ah Poo’s Certificate of Naturalization, 28 February 1883 (Author’s collection)




George and Emma left the south coast of New South Wales not long after his

naturalisation, taking the family to Parramatta. Here Emmeline Mary was born (1885),

followed by Clara (1888), Alice (1890), Arthur (1893), and Maude (1894). Ah Poo and his

family lived on James Pye’s Rocky Hall Estate adjoining Lake Parramatta (figure 5),33

where he worked as a market gardener and orchardist. 34

Figure 5. View of the Rocky Hall Estate, looking south towards Parramatta 35

Lily May Ah Poo married Henry Fine-Chong (鄭蕃昌 Zheng Fanchang) at St John’s

Anglican Cathedral in Parramatta in June 1896,36

with the Venerable Archdeacon

Günther presiding.37

George Ah Poo signed the marriage register as one of the two

witnesses; the other was Robert Cruickshank, a son-in-law of John Utick who had

travelled from the Shoalhaven for the occasion.

A few months later, Emma Ah Poo’s name appeared on the contract for a

weatherboard cottage on a block of land at the corner of Thomas and Betts Streets in

Parramatta: the house was later named Turon, a reminder of George Ah Poo’s earliest

recorded appearance in New South Wales. Bertie Ah Poo married Dorris (later Dorothy)

Louisa Stevens in 1914.38

It was Dorothy who pushed to change the family name to

33

James Pye was notorious for his disdain of locally born labour and, like many of his peers, preferred

skilled Chinese workers. Brooks, From Canton with Courage, pp. 35–41. See also James Purser, “The

Employment of Chinese,” Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 8 July 1893, p. 2. 34

“Parramatta Police Court,” Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 3 January 1891, p. 8; “The

Inquest on Mr. Peters,” Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate, 25 July 1896, p. 4. 35

“The Orange Orchard of Mr. Pye, Parramatta,” Illustrated Sydney News, 25 November 1871, p. 8. Fifteen

years later, the Ah Poo family’s home would be located out-of-frame to the right of this image, near the Windsor

Road toll-gate. 36

“Fashionable Chinese Wedding At St. John’s,” Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate,

27 June 1896, p. 12. 37

There was enormous social significance in having the highly-regarded Archdeacon Günther (his preferred

spelling) perform the wedding. Günther, the highest-ranking Anglican cleric in Parramatta, spent the rest of the

day in the company of Viscount Hampden, the Governor of NSW (see “The New Parramatta District Hospital”,

Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 1896, p. 6). 38

Marriage Registration of William H Poo and Dorris L Stevens, 1914, NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and

Marriages, 15300/1914.




“Harper” to escape what is, in fairness, a rather unfortunate surname in English. The

other six children all married as Harpers.

Gwok Ah Poo died in April 1923 at Henry and Lily Fine’s shop in Forest Lodge (near

Glebe in Sydney) and is buried in a neglected corner of the Anglican section of Sydney’s

Rookwood Necropolis: his headstone is inscribed “George Ah Poo (Harper)”. Emma

joined him in July 1931.

Figure 6. George and Emma Ah Poo in Parramatta, June 1896 (Author’s collection)

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