This is a really cool story out of Austin about the Sing family -- Joe Sing, a Chinese immigrant who broke barriers and married Francisca Moreno Sing, an American of Mexican descent, at the dawn of the 20th century. Their ancestors are just now uncovering the family's story: Austin family finds clues in attic to Chinese pioneer.
It begins sometime in the late 1800s, when Joe Sing left his family and his homeland in search of the proverbial better life in the United States.It's a fascinating story of one of Austin's earliest Chinese immigrants. Most of the items found in Margaret Sing's attic will be on the display at an Austin History Center exhibit, "Pioneers from the East: First Chinese Families in Austin." For more information about the exhibit, go here.
Sing found it in Austin, where he soon bridged Anglo, Asian and Mexican American worlds. One of the city's first Chinese residents, Sing married Francisca, an American of Mexican descent who cooked for Gov. Ma Ferguson and who, like her husband, did not lack for resolve. Together they opened the Hong Lee Laundry, which flourished by catering to bankers, legislators and white-collar workers on Congress Avenue. The couple had four children and apparently enjoyed a loving marriage. Sing never became a U.S. citizen, however — the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade it — and under another law, Moreno, without realizing it, forfeited her citizenship simply by marrying Sing.
But, perhaps because the Sing-Moreno story was not passed down in the detail it might have deserved, their descendants never really made too much of their family heritage, their ancestors' pioneering spirit or their own melting-pot mix of heritages. American. Chinese. Mexican.
Never made much, that is, until that day in 2007 when, in the historical East Austin home of Margaret Sing, the late daughter of Joe and Francisca, they stumbled upon a box they hadn't known existed. About 3 feet long and 2 feet deep, the cardboard box contained personal effects more than 100 years old that belonged to Joe and Francisca. The contents awakened family members' curiosity about their ancestry, stoked their pride and their introspection and moved them to tears. The items revealed, too, a family secret. They told a story of family — a story long stored away and now reclaimed.