Finding 818K in the National Archives of Singapore

Hi All!

This post is a follow up to the previous chronologically-accurate posts in the "My Ubin Journey" series, "So My Primary School Was My Mom's Ubin Neighbour", which was published nearly a month ago! My apologies for the lack in catching up on the real timeline as I have been caught up with work.

In this post, I talk about my engagement with NParks after finding out about their efforts in restoring the kampong houses on Pulau Ubin, as well as my own self-initiated research saga.

I contacted NParks via their Pulau Ubin email, requesting their assistance in locating the house. The only best way I could describe at the time was that it was near Kelichap Hut and nothing more. It was extremely difficult to point out the directions but I had good faith that whoever read my email could get a sense of general direction. Oh, and at that point of time as well, my mom and I still firmly believed that my late grandparents' kampong house was situated within Kampong Sungei Durian.

Kampong Sungei Durian and Kampong Surau were neighbouring villages, only separated by a stream. Any houses found before it would be in the former while the houses found after it would be the latter. However, my grandparents' kampong house was considerably much closer to the other houses in Kampong Sungei Durian than those in Kampong Surau, leading to my mom's beliefs that the house was situated in Kampong Sungei Durian.

I sent the email to them with much hope and anticipation, but also expecting a very slow response given my many experiences with emailing other government agencies, imagining how many emails would really come across their servers given the nature of us Singaporeans (insert subtle hint that we complain a lot here). Afterwards, I decided to call it a day and went to sleep.

The next few days, I decided to do some researching. It was pretty fun, considering that I would never be so moved to conduct a research of this scale back in my school years for any of my assignments. I was just Googling away and hoping for maybe, just maybe that there might have been a photograph of my late grandparents' house somewhere; maybe by some adventurous people who went off the normal tracks. Perhaps, there might have also been a map of the area that might be of assistance to me and NParks to help narrow down my search. Oh, and I even brought my research into work, hehe. Luckily enough, there wasn't much of a workload at that point in time and I had a lot of free time - so might as well I use the free time to good use.

Eventually, I managed to come across the National Archives of Singapore (NAS) webpage. I should've had my research done immediately on this site in the first place, as I managed to find so many Ubin-related matters here! My focus at that time was to locate a map of the area; hoping to find proof of my late grandparent's house's existence; just in case NParks or anyone else needed more supporting evidence.

Finally, after a few hours I derived into something that widened my eyes with fascination:

Image Source: National Archives of Singapore

This map struck me as it was able to document a path that could not be found in the maps today. Upon closer inspection and familiarisation with this map, I could confirm that the straight path almost parallel to the stream to its south was similar to that as the one that would have led to my late grandparent's house - given its general geographic location.

Image Source: National Archives of Singapore

Kampong Melayu was an unofficial name given to this generic area of Pulau Ubin, mainly because most of the residents here were Malays. In today's records, Kampong Melayu would comprise of Kampong Sungei Durian and Kampong Surau. The yellow rectangle in the map above would make up the school, as proven by another map that I have stumbled across a few minutes later.

Image Source: National Archives of Singapore

Image Source: National Archives of Singapore

This map provided a much more detailed topographical perspective on the generic area of where my late grandparents' house was believed to be. Towards the left side of the map, Sungei Durian, the stream that lead to the house can be seen.

As mentioned above, the Sekolah Melayu Pulau Ubin or "Pulau Ubin Malay School" can be seen cross-documented between the two different maps shown earlier. The path leading towards the house was more or less documented; it was not as straight as the first map above but it was generally similar. It was through this map as well that we were able to see the houses. From my mom's sharing of how the houses were located along the path, I could verify that the house closest to the stream was Pak Ahmad's first house before he moved to 488A Kampong Sungei Durian - his current residence; and that the house at the end of the path was that of my late grandparents' house.

I was filled with glee and shared this finding with my mom. It then struck me that although the houses were drawn, they were not labelled; the addresses of the homes were not there. Despite that however, my mom and I were confident enough to know that my late grandparents' house has been documented on a map that was created back in circa 1970.

From there, I needed to know more information. What plot of land was the house on, and how could I find it. There still remained numerous questions unanswered and there was soon a lack of documentation to signify it on the National Archives webpage as I have reached the last page of the search results. Nonetheless, I was pleased to see a part of our past being kept and recorded, and I believed that this would have helped to ease my quest in finding my grandparents' house.

After nearly a week spending my time on the Internet researching on this, I received a shocking email on Saturday evening. It was from NParks. The reason why I was shocked was because of how fast they have gotten back to me (or the fact that my email was replied to), hehe. It came from someone by the name of Mr Alan Tan. He had replied, saying that the house that he was able to find at the area in which I described to him in my email, was that of 22E. In my mind, I thought to myself that perhaps he was mentioning about the yellow house that was exactly opposite the hut. 

Anyway, I was still touched to know that there was an effort made by NParks to help me out in my quest. I was excited to catch them in this momentum and did not hesitate in contacting Mr Alan immediately via Whatsapp as his number was also left his email's signature. Mr Alan was more than happy to bring my mom and I down to the site to also help him in finding the house. And so, we agreed to meet the very next day on Pulau Ubin at 10 a.m. That night, I was thrilled and filled with hope; thinking to myself that there was a probability that my mom and I would be able to reconnect once more with my late grandparents' house.

Read the previous post in "My Ubin Journey"!

"So My Primary School Teacher Was My Mom's Ubin Neighbour"