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Published: January 5th 2024
Hello Great Grandma!
My great grandmother's grave was illuminated by a sunbeam when we found it. I think she was telling us how happy she was we came to visit her.Established by the British colonial government in the 1920s, the 200 hectare Bukit Brown Cemetery nestled in the center of Singapore is the final resting place for many of Singapore’s prominent ethnic Chinese pioneers. Rather interestingly, the class conscious British were horrified that many poor Chinese were not buried after they died, so they earmarked the lower reaches of the cemetery as a "paupers' section", while the areas higher up the hill became the domain of the bourgeois, with many of its wealthy denizens entombed in elaborate graves. From the 1970s onwards, the cemetery started falling into disuse as the descendants of the departed started dying out themselves. Nature took over, and the profile of visitors slowly transitioned from filial descendants of the deceased to birdwatchers and nature enthusiasts.
In the early 2010s, Bukit Brown returned to the national consciousness when plans were revealed to redevelop the area. Suddenly, people took notice, and there was a fair bit of lobbying to preserve the heritage and nature in the area. Although a section of the cemetery did make way for a new bypass, the redevelopment master plan ironically breathed new life into Bukit Brown as people flocked to explore the area
My Great Grandmother's Grave in the early 2010s
My cousin Hercules (pictured) tracked down our great grandmother's grave a decade ago. This is a picture he took when he discovered the grave. He later paid a cemetery caretaker to clean up the grave and maintain it. Photo credit: H. Lim. and learn about Singapore's heritage. Many people, my cousin among them, sought out their ancestors' graves, restored them, and paid for their upkeep.
Back in May this year, I reconnected with my long lost cousin Hercules after my father's funeral, and he told me our great grandmother was buried in Bukit Brown. My interest was piqued, and I set out one humid morning armed with a map provided by Hercules to find my great grandmother's grave. Unfortunately, X didn't mark the spot, and after a lot of traipsing around overgrown graves, I gave up. I wrote about that expedition in
this blog entry.
Soon after that failed quest, I joined a
Facebook group for Bukit Brown and I put up a post asking for help locating the grave. The amateur historians on that site immediately found it. My cousin was also on that Facebook group, and he volunteered to take me to the grave. Then, a young woman from the group named Grace piped in and said that the grave I was looking for was her great great grandmother. After some investigating, we established that Grace is my mother's father's brother's son's son's daughter (I’ll just refer to her as my distant niece; it’ll
Hello Great Grandma!
Hercules, Grace, and I at the grave. Photo credit: H. Lim. take too much brain damage to try and qualify our exact relationship!). She had visited the grave more recently than my cousin and she volunteered to join us.
On the afternoon of September 26th, Hercules, Grace, and I met at Tan Kah Kee MRT Station and made our way via Grab to Bukit Brown. Because of construction in the area, the online map was rather confusing and the poor Grab driver had to make a big circuit before depositing us at the cemetery entrance. From there, it was a 15 minute walk to an iconic landmark grave with statues of Sikh guards. Back in May, I spent quite a bit of time looking in the area directly uphill from that grave as Hercules had marked that area as the location of our great grandmother's grave.
Once we hit the grave with the Sikh guard statues, Grace was able to quickly locate our great grandmother's grave, which turned out to be a little bit further west from the spot Hercules had marked for me. When we found it, it was illuminated by a sunbeam; it was as if my great grandmother was telling us she was happy we came
My Great Grandmother
Grace and Hercules recently connected with another descendent of Chia Swee Peck Neo. He believes this picture is of her. Photo credit: G. Lim. to visit. We paid our respects by bowing to her three times per Chinese tradition, and then we examined the various features of the grave. I specifically looked for my mother's name on the right arm of the tomb. My mother was an infant when her grandmother died, and she and my late Aunty Nancy are listed as descendants on the tomb. When it was time to depart, we again bowed to our ancestor three times before leaving. While we were at Bukit Brown, we also looked at some signboards explaining the symbols on these graves, as well as a bit of the history of the cemetery from its roots in colonial times. I learned a lot from the signboards.
A few words about my great grandmother:
• Her name was Mrs Lim Koh Seng, nee Chia Swee Peck Neo.
• She married into the Lim family, which we suspect were a well-to-do
Peranakan family.
• She passed away in August 1935.
• Her obituary in the Straits Times said she was 79 years old when she died, but her burial record said she was 76. Her age on her tombstone is a little eroded, but it looks like it says 76.
My Great Grandmother's Grave
My mother and my late Aunt Nancy are listed as descendants on one of the arms of the tomb. Their names are the bottom two pictured here. Either way, it must have been rare to live to that age at that time.
• She had six sons and two daughters listed on her tombstone, but her obituary listed seven daughters-in-law and three sons-in-law. I later learned that one daughter predeceased her, and that one son had two wives.
• Her tombstone says she had 13 grandsons and 19 granddaughters, but her obituary said she had 44 grandchildren. I can’t account for the discrepancy. I shudder to think that she may have buried as many as 12 grandchildren in addition to the daughter she outlived. That must have been heartbreaking.
• The Chinese characters at the top of her headstone indicate that her ancestral village is in Haicheng County in Fujian.
• Her tomb adornments include what I think are inkwells, which in turn suggest that she was educated, which must have been unusual for women of that era.
• Other tomb adornments included two tomb guardians (one male and one female), and a small shrine on the side to an earth deity. The markings on the tomb were in both English and Chinese.
I had a great day out and I cannot thank my cousin and niece enough for
My Great Grandmother's Funeral
We believe this photo, taken in 1935, is of my great grandmother's grave not long after her funeral. I'm intrigued by the hats the men in this photo wore; it seems as if they were following some sort of colonial dress code.
Photo credit: G. Lim. taking the time to help me get a little closer to my roots.
This visit was part of my trip to Singapore and Sri Lanka in September and October 2023. I'll get down to publishing more blogs eventually. One of the reasons why I’ve been derelict in posting blogs is because the 48 megapixel raw format photos taken on my new iPhone are too large to upload to this site, and I haven’t had the time to figure out how to manipulate the photos to fit the specifications. I deliberately uploaded poorer quality photos in the interest of publishing this entry sooner.
In the meantime, please enjoy my writeups and photos from this trip on my
Find Penguins page.
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Kuan Yin
Karen Johnson
Graveyards as history
There are some interesting stories in graveyards, not only family stories, but you can see when an epidemic has swet through an area, or some other catastrophic event that has cut short many lives. I'm glad you found your great grandmother's grave. It would be interesting if you could find out more about her education and how it came to be.