Family Kwee and Han history

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  • Kwee house 1
  • Kwee house 2

 

  • STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION **

    For pics, please see links Kwee house 1 and 2 on the left panel

    Our particular Kwee family originated from Liu Chuan, a chinese village an hour’s drive west of Xiamen, Fujian province, South China. The elders in this village have told me that our ancestors did not consume pork meat, therefore they were Muslims, and likely members of the Hui minority (with mainly paternal ancestry of Persian and Middle-Eastern origin who married chinese Han women).

    It is as yet unknown who and when exactly our first ancestor arrived in Indonesia. The oldest information we have is a painting of our ancestor Kwee Tjong Hook (Hock) and likely his first wife (name unknown) seated on the left (Click on the link):

    https://imageproxy.viewbook.com/54076/f82f8f0f5714fe41ff67c3c98dca2dd7_hd.jpg

    The data we have from this painting is that Kwee Tjong Hock was born in 1754 and married to Oei Tjwan Nio who was born in 1799, which means he was 45 when she was born, and must have been 61 when he married her (assuming she married at age 16). Therefore Oei Tjwan Nio was likely the second wife, as the age difference is quite large, and she may not be the lady on the painting, because the lady on the painting looks too old for being the second wife. The story within the family goes that the marriage of Kwee Tjong Hock and his first/second wife was endorsed by the chinese Emperor, but we do not have proof of this. It is also as yet a mystery to the family what his life was like as nothing has been written down….....

    From online scanned old newspaper clippings (www.delpher.nl) we know more about the son of Kwee Tjong Hock: Kwee Ting Swan, who with his brother Kwee Ting Tjang, owned a sugar factory in the East-Java city of Pasuruan, the sugar center of the world at the time. Sugar production from sugarcane was introduced by the chinese into Indonesia (which they learned a long time ago from India), but the technology they employed was very simple presses and other methods to crystallize the sugar. Indonesia was in the late 19th century the second largest sugar exporting country in the world after Cuba when the sugar production was modernized with machinery from France and Britain and the sugar experimental station in Pasuruan was the best in the world. However, after 1930 this all started to decline, due to the world crash, as well as the increased cultivation of sugar beet in Europe that replaced the imports of sugar from sugar cane.

    This Kwee family however diversified into buying land and houses in Pasuruan, running pawn shops, as well as the sale of opium (Kwee Sik Khie; youngest son of Kwee Ting Swan), which was legal at the time. The running pf pawn shops and selling opium was done after winning auctions for the rights of doing this business. The British and later also the Dutch cultivated opium in their colonial lands, and made huge profits of it, due to the addictive nature of smoking opium. Opium sales were regulated by selling the rights to sell opium by auction to the highest bidder, which gave the person the right to sell opium in his area for a year. Monthly payments equal to the winning bid were then required to the colonial powers.

    We have more information only from Kwee Sik Poo (Kapitein der Chineezen of Pasuruan 1886-1926 and eldest son of Kwee Ting Swan) onwards at the moment. Kwee Sik Poo was born in 1847 and passed away in 1930 after a long fruitful life. As the Kapitein der Chineezen, he was respected and well loved as can be seen from his obituary. The Kwee Sik Poo family together with the Han family belonged to the larger business families in Pasuruan, in part for their involvement in the sugar production, land property ownerships and opium lease businesses. Other prominent families at the time were the Tan and Liem families of Pasuruan, and several other Kwee families (no direct connection to our Kwee family, other than intermarriage) were actually more prominent business wise.

    Kwee Sik Poo eldest son, Kwee Khoen Hwa (my great grandfather) married Han Giok Siam, who was the daughter of Han Hoo Tjoan (former Kapitein der Chineezen of Pasuruan until 1886).........many members of these families intermarried.

    Han Hoo Tjoan together with his younger brothers Han Hoo Lam and Han Hoo Tong, were active in the tobacco and sugar industry. They owned the large Plered sugar factory in Pasuruan, until it was sold to become Nebritex, a now defunct textile factory, and the building still stands today.