Ong Origins

At long last I have figured out how to share my slide show from last year's Mini-Reunion!  Enjoy, and let me know if any comments or questions!  -The Editor

Ong Family 2015 Year-end Newsletter

Dear Ong Family and Friends,

New Year’s greetings to you all!  I write today (also my son Finley’s birthday) from my family’s farm in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, not far from where the American branch of the Ong family lived in a Quaker farming settlement in the 1790’s.  There are still cousins living in the vicinity, making this region the one with the longest period of uninterrupted settlement by American Ongs – over 220 years!  Although given that there are English family records going back to the year 1280, no doubt we have cousins “across the pond” who can boast far deeper local roots.

As you know, I started my blog after the “Mini-Reunion” which my father and I organized in August 2014 around the Bicentennial celebrations of the Quaker Yearly Meeting House in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, built under the leadership of my ancestor Jacob Ong (1760-1849).  At that time we reached out to various random cousins around the country for whom we had contact details, both known and unknown to us.  But we had a very positive response from about 60 cousins, of whom over 40 were able to attend, and we had an enjoyable time in each other’s company for two days.  The unanimous conclusion of the cousins who attended the reunion, was “Let’s keep in touch and do this again!”

The success of the gathering inspired me to continue the family community-building process through the means of sharing some historical materials on a new blog and its accompanying Facebook page (facebook.com/ongfamilyhistory).  Since family history is my 3^rd or maybe even 4^th hobby, I have managed to write only 16 posts on the blog (one a month on average), as well as a few other minor posts on the FB page.  But while I still have a lot of unfinished post ideas which time has not permitted me to complete, the venture has been very successful in expanding the network of Ong cousins.  The OFH page on Facebook now has almost 100 followers, and almost all of these cousins and friends are also personal Facebook “Friends” of mine.  So when I log in on the train home from work most days, I have the treat of following the interests and exploits of various Ongs around the globe.  (This includes Ongs who adopted the name through marriage, and I continue to give all of you special thanks for taking this name by choice!)  It has been a true joy to have connected with so many of you over the last 16 months and I look forward to sharing your “Friendship” – if not real friendship – in the years ahead.  Most of my FB contacts are from five different “clusters” of the US family tree, mostly unknown to each other until now, and I have also been delighted to see how direct communication between members of these clusters has flourished over the past year.

Because of the length of the family’s history and breadth of the family tree, many of us are quite distantly related, though we might share a last name.  Among the American Ongs, some of the younger of us are as distant as ninth cousins to each other – in other words our closest common ancestors are among the three Ong families living in SW Pennsylvania 220 years ago or their parents, Jeremiah & Christiana Ong.  And the relationships between English and American Ongs are more distant still, since our common ancestors were born in the 1500’s or earlier, making the younger of us at least 15^th cousins to each other! 

As a result the profile of our family is very diverse and reflects in many respects the variety of our society as a whole, and this is something which is quite striking from my perspective.  Within the larger American side of the family, we live in all corners of the country, we are in all walks of life, observe many forms of belief and unbelief, are inclined in all directions of political opinion, and live in the widest range of personal and professional circumstances one can imagine.  Of course in our “melting pot” on this continent, the Ongs as a whole long ago ceased to be of only British ancestry, and now we are no longer of only European ancestry.  That's America!

The main “news” in this newsletter is that I repeat our intention to hold a grand family reunion in St. Louis in 2018, exact date tbd.  The Ong Reunion in Smithfield, Ohio in 1905 reportedly had 400 Ongs in attendance and 1000 guests in total, and my ambition is to match this.  It would require some commitment and resolve on all of our parts to make the effort to congregate, but St. Louis is conveniently located in the center of the country, and we have over two years to plan and organize ourselves.  I really don’t know how many cousins reside in America, but I know for certain it is far larger than my 100 Ong Facebook friends!  I also know that many of you already have traditions of regular Ong family reunions within your “cluster”, so I would appreciate your consideration in incorporating that into this grand scheme for 2018!   Also if you are reading this and have not previously been in touch with me, I would appreciate hearing from you by email at ongfamilyhistory@gmail.com or via Facebook.

In the meanwhile, I will continue to post articles of interest relating to our family’s history.  I have also reserved a website with a view that it will act as a host for the blog and as a way to share other related materials, including in time my version of the family tree.  (There is more than one interpretation of some of the areas where the evidence is fuzzy to say the least!)

As an amateur genealogist, I must say the modern trends in family life create some challenges in family tree building.  Multiple marriages are now common, and the tradition of passing down the family name from the paternal line is no longer universally observed.  In fact we have some cousins who have taken the Ong name from their mothers, which helps to offset some of those who have voluntarily surrendered the family name for whatever reason.  It all makes one aware that the use of a last name is a somewhat arbitrary thing, and I am very conscious that in addition to being an Ong we are all members of a vast number of other families, some of whom have married into one another on several occasions.  But a last name does signal connection, and our interest in connecting with unknown cousins I believe comes from a natural desire to belong something greater than the immediate family.  And when one begins to appreciate how large our family connections are, you become also more conscious of how related the entire human family is to one another, and our responsibility to bear that in mind in our dealings with the world.

In conclusion, whether or not you use the Ong name, whether you were born an Ong or married an Ong, or have an Ong mother or only an Ong great-great-great grandmother, or none of the above, I appreciate your interest, friendship and/or kinship, whatever the case may be.  Meet Me in St. Louis in 2018, if not before!

Your cousin,

John F.H. Ong

30 December 2015
  

IN MEMORIAM

Beale Hibbs Ong, M.D. 1932-2015

David Eugene Ong, Ph.D. 1943-2015