Welcome

The Zalewski Album is a research endeavor which began in 2007 by three cousins:  Karen in Canada,  Sandra in the USA and Peter in the UK. Karen is the owner of a large and mysterious photograph album brought back to Canada from Europe by her grandfather, William Quinn, at the end of the Second World War. We think the photos (nearly 400 of them) were taken before 1935. The majority are of scenes in China and we’re guessing that they were taken before the Westerners were exiled from that country in 1927. To judge from the apparent age of a boy, Kirby Boyd, in the photos this might have been as early as 1920. Dating is important to us as some of the photos seem to be recording political events in that country and it would be good to identify them.

At first we did not know who had owned the album originally or who took the photographs and our main aim in this research was to identify that person or persons.   There is one candidate, however, whose name appears roughly scrawled inside the first page on the binding of the album: Clare “Slim” “Streak” Zalewski.  Unfortunately all attempts to track down this person have so far failed, but the original ownership of the album has, in fact, now been established beyond reasonable doubt (Sandra still has some doubt) and it is unlikely that it was Zalewski.

The only name actually attached to any photos is “Kirby Boyd”, a small boy of about 12 years old. He appears on several photos taken in Peking but there are very few shots of  other people in the album and none of them are named. Some photos of houses, however, are identified by initials (ELC, LVC, CCS and WAA) and these have led us to a strong connection with the English Cockell family. Edward Lawrence Cockell was a big wheel in the British Legation at Peking. He was married to Katherine Newbery, born in Melbourne in about 1875, and she was Kirby’s aunt. Edward had a brother, Lewis Vincent Cockell, whose house in England features in the album. By means of this website we have now been contacted by descendants of the Cockells’ younger brother Allan McDonnell Cockell who also lived for a time in China. The initials C.C.S., associated with a photograph of a house in Purley, England, belonged to Cyril Charles Simpson who was the Cockells’ brother-in-law. Another English house in the album belonged to Wilfred Ansell Argent, a British merchant who travelled frequently to China and in the early 1920s was the owner of a steamship on the River Yangtze! Although we now know that Argent was a friend of the Boyds, we still have more to learn about his activities in China.

Further research into young Kirby traced through ships’ manifests revealed his marriage to Iris Anita Tayler and the birth in China of a daughter, Rosemary. He died in 1975 at age 65 in Montreal Canada and, by means of this website, we have now been contacted by Rosemary herself and by her younger brother Richard. We three cousins (who did not meet until 2009) have been having tremendous fun using the internet, as well as traditional methods, to do our sleuthing. New information arrives at regular intervals to keep us involved in the mystery of the album but one answered question always seems to lead to two unanswered ones! Whilst we now believe (everyone but Sandra) that the album belonged to Laurie and Kit Cockell and that it was probably lost from their house in Italy during the Second World War we still do not know who Zalewski was and there are many details of the family’s life in China, especially associated with Wilfred Ansell Argent that we have yet to clarify.

What information we have collected by means of census, ships’ manifests, links, photos and other documentation about this album are included in this website. Any help that anyone can offer or contacts with branches of the Boyd/Argent/Cockell/Zalewski families would be really appreciated.