In Search of One’s Identity
Friday 29 August 2008, 7:00 p.m.
VENUE: coffee shop, 26th floor, Jie Fang News Building, 300 Hankou Road, near Shandong Road
Pixie Gray has sought answers to her ancestry as to how her grandparents John Dunbar and Florence Eugene Pringle (nee Marsh) came to be in China. Pixie will give you some insight into their lives from their births in New Hartley, Northumberland and Lambeth, Surrey, England in 1863 and 1858 respectively. At the time of the census in 1881 they were both still living at their respective family homes. He, a son of a coal miner and a coal miner himself in an area NE of Newcastle-on-Tyne and she, a seamstress in West Derby, Lancashire. However, it would appear that in the 1891 census they must have left England for their new adventures to a mystic land far away. For John Dunbar it was to work in North China’s coalmines as a coal-mining engineer but why did Florence leave her home to travel so far? A marriage license and two birth notices registered in Northern China have been found which began a list of descendants who resided in China till 1948. This is their story…
Eileen (Pixie) Gray is the younger daughter of Henry Forsythe and Isabella McKendrick Pringle (nee Holmes). Pixie was born in Paulun Hospital, Shanghai on 19 March 1936 and apart from a sojourn in Hong Kong in 1937, lived in Shanghai till October 1941 when she and her mother and older sister, Elizabeth were sent by their father to Australia prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Henry stayed behind and was imprisoned by the Japanese. The three lived in Australia until late 1946 when they returned to Shanghai where both girls attended the Shanghai British School. In late 1948 it was clear to their parents that the life they once led in their beloved China was no longer tenable and once again they fled, this time back to Australia where the girls finished their education. Elizabeth became a secretary and Pixie a primary school teacher specialising in music. Despite financial difficulties for many years during their teenage years, a life rich in culture was pursued. After Pixie’s marriage to John Gray in 1959 and subsequent parenthood Pixie returned to teaching and spent a life involved in music in her community. She was awarded an OAM (Medal in the Order of Australia) in 2006 for this work.