My co-worker Mike asked me, “Are you any relation to Yung Wing (see my last blog), since your last name is Yung? “I asked the elders of my family in China the same question! They said “No! Even if we were, it would not be a very close relation,” which means, although we came from the same area next to Macau, it  may have been some relationship a long time ago. Chinese history spans more than five-thousand years and the United States is only two to three hundred years old. Searching back for my ancestors in China is tough! Unlike Chan, Wong, Ma, Lee or Li, which are popular surnames, Yung is a relatively small one and most of them are from the South. The first waves of Chinese who came to America were Cantonese. They lived in or near Hong Kong and Macau where the opportunity to migrate to the U.S. was far greater.  If Homer Lea could speak Chinese, it was most likely the Cantonese language, not Mandarin. Captain  O’Banion’s book, Double Ten, uses the Chinese dialect of Cantonese, such as “Ho Si Gui!”. It means “It’s a wonderful world!”. Today all over China, people speak Mandarin, or Putonghau. The Cantonese dialect may someday disappear.

 

                                   

        In 1893, Homer Lea’s father, Alfred Erskine Lea, moved his family to Los Angeles from Denver, Colorado, expecting the milder weather to do him good because he suffered back pain from his mining business that forced him to lie down for most of the day. On August 6, 1862, when Alfred Erskine Lea was 14 years old, his father, Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea from Jackson County, Missouri, put him on a wagon train owned by his friend, Dr. Parmer of Independence, Missouri, because that section of the county was affected by the Kansas-Missouri Border War. That train finally reached Denver, Colorado.

  

         Denver was a small town that had been settled for only four years. Alfred Erskine Lea established his first business abstracting titles. Perhaps he was the first to collect and edit a set of abstract books in the county (in 1885, Alfred came to Roswell, New Mexico to help his two brothers, Joseph Calloway Lea and Frank Houston Lea, both were early-day settlers and builders of Roswell, to lay out the town into blocks and nice wide streets based on what his father had done with Cleveland, TN). Alfred met Hersa Coberly from Indiana. They married and had three children, two girls, Elvira and Mary, and the youngest son, Homer, was born November 17,1876. Unfortunately, his mother passed away when Homer was still a young child. The three children were sent to live with their grandmother in Indiana. In Denver, Alfred married his second wife, Emma Wilson who was a teacher. They had known each other in Missouri when they were young. The three children in Indiana, were sent back to Denver to live with their family. Emma taught Homer, as he missed school due to his back ailment.

  

         Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea was a peaceful man, born September 6, 1807 in Jefferson county, Tennessee, who settled in a large farm home in Jackson County, Missouri, with his second wife and the children from his first marriage, a total of eight children. He was determined to move his family away from the destruction of the Border War and sent his youngest son and four daughters to their relatives behind Confederate lines in Tennessee. Another son drove his pregnant stepmother and sister in a covered wagon to Sedalia, Missouri. From there they took a train to Cleveland, Ohio. After Dr. Lea said good bye to his son Alfred, a month later Dr. Lea was found murdered in August, 1862 by the Kansas Jayhawkers.

  

        To honor Dr. Pleasant Lea, the local people and the railroad surveyors wanted to name this town after Dr. Lea, for his passion and dedicated service to the townspeople. Dr. Lea's farm was on the highest point adjacent to the tracks and he was killed near the site where a depot was proposed. They chose the name of "Lea's Summit". The summit refers to the highest elevation on the Missouri Pacific Railroad between Kansas City and St. Louis. However, the workers misspelled the name "Lee's Summit" on a box car donated by the Missouri Pacific, then on the stone culvert on the side of the Missouri Pacific depot. The other side was spelled correctly. Those who moved here from the South after the Civil War claimed that the name Lee was chosen in sympathy with Robert E. Lee. It is interesting to know, even today, that grandfather and grandson are still facing the same confusion over the two names Lea and Lee. Today, the City of Lee's Summit is a beautiful city, voted one of the hundred best cities to live in. The remains of Dr. Pleasant and Homer's father Alfred Lea, along with their family members, were placed in Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery.

  

       Homer Lea's family came from Tennessee, descendants of James Lea, one of three brothers who arrived from England in 1740. The Lees of Virginia, found by Richard Lee who also born in England, had died in America in 1664, almost one hundred years before James Lea. The Lees of Virginia and the Leas of Tennessee were not related. Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea's great-grandson Thomas Calloway Lea III (1907-2001) known as Tom Lea, was a famous artist, painter, author, and correspondent for Life WWII; he painted a mural in the Pleasant Hill, Missouri Post Office about Confederates who were turned out of their homes after the Civil Wars. Lea's family was a great, wonderful family.

  

       I deeply appreciate the reader Don, who encouraged me to write about Homer Lea's family. And I also would like to thank the fine folks at the cemetery in the City of Lee's Summit who took the above photo for this article.

 

 

Other references: (Dr. Pleasant John Graves Lea’s descendants)

 

*Son: Thomas Calloway S. Lea Sr. (1839-April 20, 1910; Jackson County, MO commissioner, knew Harry S. Truman; Truman later commissioner of Jackson County.)

 

 

*Son: Joseph Calloway Lea (1841-11-08 Cleveland, Tennessee, died 1904-02-04 Roswell, New Mexico.; Captain Joseph C. Lea, From Confederate Guerrilla to New Mexico Patriarch by Elvis E. Fleming. ISBN 9781881325536) Namesake for Lea County, New Mexico; founder Lea Cattle Company; founder of the New Mexico Military Academy (NMMI) at Roswell, NM. Created Chaves County, New Mexico. Married (August 18, 1913) Sally Wildy Lea (d.1884); their child, Ella Lea Dow, was the first baby born in Roswell. Joseph C. rode with Cole Younger, personally knew Jessse and Frank James, Bob Ford, Clay Allison and Billy the Kid. He was with Quantrill on the Lawrence, Kansas raid. He married the richest woman in Texas (after Sallie Wildy died in 1884), Mabel Doss (Day) Lea (1889), widow of the Day Ranch. The town of Leaday (Lea-Day), Texas was named for her and her two husbands. Joseph C. Lea is considered “The Father of Roswell”.