Major Edwin Foster Ong

 

Major Edwin Foster Ong

Steve Reed over at Shadows and Light solved the case for me. In my last post he linked a photograph of the same man above that was attributed to Burlington, Iowa which is only 30 miles from Wapello, Iowa. But that wasn't the clue that solved it. The clue that Steve gave me was saying that the back of the picture possibly said Major and not Mayor. That letter made all the difference and on my third try to enter the right combination of words to find more information, I hit the jackpot.

Edwin was born on 18 May 1857 in Wapello, Iowa to Finley M. and Eliza Jane Christie Ong along with a younger sister Lillie and a younger brother George. That dates my photograph above to sometime in 1901 or early 1902. Despite the Asian looking left eye, he is listed as "white" in all census records along with both of his parents. His father Finley was a tailor before the Civil War but gave that up to "fight" for Company K of the 8th Iowa Calvary. Most of the military records I find have Finley in the company band or working secretarial like jobs. When Finley returned from the war, he works for a time in Burlington as a salesman for a grocery store but soon returned to Wapello where he joined forces with G. R. Keller and started a successful mercantile business. According to one source, Keller and Ong were quite successful and always in the middle of any new enterprise that started up in Wapello.

Thus far, Edwin's early years are a bit more of a mystery. According to census records, he went to school like all his other peers. When he stopped his formal education, he started a career as a telegraph operator. In all the other census records, it is recorded that Edwin never married and no occupation was ever listed again after 1880. Newspaper clippings shed some light on that.

18 Apr 1889 - Louisa County Record

Edwin did have an occupation after all though it might not have been considered a respectable one at the time. Edwin ran off and joined the circus, the John Robinson Circus to be exact. According to google, the John Robinson Circus rand from 1842 to 1911 before it was sold off and after changing hands a couple of times was eventually bought up by the Ringling Brothers Circus.

Most likely it was the circus that dubbed Edwin a Major as I can find no military record. I do find numerous mentions of him within old Robinson Circus documents listing him as Major Ong, Little Man From Wapello. From what I can determine from the newspapers, Edwin works for a couple of years for the circus and then got a job at the Boston Dime Museum operated by a J.H. Barnum. 

But beyond 1893, mentions of Edwin's work become impossible to locate and most of the articles I find just mention him locally in the Wapello area and don't mention any work for the circus or "museums". Edwin's father would die in February 1912 and sadly three months later, Edwin Foster Ong died at 55 years old of an unmentioned illness. He was laid to rest in the Wapello town cemetery next to his father. His sister Lillie spent her life as a music teacher and also never married. She is buried in the family plot as well. Brother George also shared in the family musical gene and was a member of the Iowa State Band into his 20's. George's career however was spent similar to his father as a salesman and was the only child of Finley and Eliza to marry and have children. George is also buried in the family plot in Wapello.