Many thanks to our London correspondent, Les Ong, who has shared a copy of sheet music composed by a member of the U.S. branch of the family, published in 1898. Due to the unusual name, it was relatively easy to conclude that the composer must be Judson W. Ong, Jr., the oldest child of Judson W. and Isabel (Mays) Ong born in Woodford County, Illinois on 5 November 1880. So he would have been only 17 or 18 years old when this music was published, which is reflected in the youthful photograph on the cover.
A biography of Judson Ong, Jr appears in "The Book of Clevelanders: A Biographical Dictionary of Living Men of the City of Cleveland" (The Burrows Bros. Co, Cleveland: 1914) as follows:
ONG, Judson W. Jr; piano business; born, Lacon, Ill., Nov. 5, 1880: son of Judson W. and Isabelle Mayes Ong; educated, Lacon, Ill., High School; married, Chicago, Ill., Jan. 2, 1902, Mercedes E. Armitage; one son and one daughter, William and Mercedes; entered the retail piano business with George P. Bent, of Chicago, when he was 18; has continued in the piano business; traveled for leading wholesale firms; promoted and built, with H. J. Anderson, one of the most successful player piano mechanisms; came to Cleveland in 1904; has managed the Piano Dept. of the Bailey Co., and was connected with several other firms; in 1911, became identified with the W. F. Frederick Piano Co., as city sales and advertising mgr.; at one time pres. and treas. of The Anderson Piano Co.; was one of the first to introduce the self-playing piano in the West and Middle West; was at one time connected with the New York store of John Wanamaker, as "special piano playing mechanism demonstrator," and received personal compliments of I. J. Paderewski, in this connection.
Sometime before the 1920 U.S. Census, Judson and Mercedes Ong had moved with their children to Kansas City, Missouri, where a significant number of their descendants still reside. (Judson and Mercedes are the parents of pioneer aviator William Ong earlier profiled on the blog here.) The 1930 census places Judson Ong on the road as a salesman lodging in Ardmore, Oklahoma, and the 1940 census has him back in Kansas City, but now remarried to Hulda Ragnhild Rasmussen (nee Olsen), born in Denmark in 1886, the widow of Michael M. Rasmussen (1880-1929). (The "g" in Ragnhild is silent but lengthens the "a", so the name is pronounced "Raynhild" and often appears in records that way.) Judson and Ragnhild subsequently moved to California, and they are both buried in Glendale in Los Angeles County.
The music is out of copyright of course, so appears below. Which of our many musical cousins (your Editor among them) will be the first to post a recording?
