The Alarakia Family of HongKong

 I have updated the original with the following: The following is taken from an article written for the Juneau Douglas City Museam in Alaska by Mr John L (Cameron) Asp who was Goolam’s grandson: Goolam Hoosein married Annie Von Henriques in Kobe, Japan while on a business trip and they lived in the Kobe International Settlement where they raised eight children. One of those children was Maude Matildae Arab who married and divorced John McMillan Cameron. She had a son John who was adopted at an early age by Maudes second husband Svend (Sam) Asp. John later became an artist known as John L (Cameron) Asp, married Ruth Wison and had two children Jo-Ann and Svend Thomas Asp. There is still a lot to learn about Goolams Family and I shall endeavour to learn more and bring this up to date.  

  My Alarakia Family  by Ken Alarakia-Charles  Preface I have done quite a bit of research but I am left with lots of dots to join up. Google searches have given me a lot more than I started with but also a lot of questions. Questions like where did my grandfathers family originate. I know both his father Mahomed and his grandfather Sewjee came to Hong Kong from India in the mid 1800s. My Great Great Grandfather Sewjee Alarakia was born in India in 1843 and died in Hong Kong 21 Jun 1890. It is  possible that he originated in Cutch an old Princely State also known as the Kingdom of Kutch from 1147 to 1819. I say this because I found a record of traveller named Ebraim Alarakia age 34 who was stated as being from Cutch and sailed regularly from Galle to Sidney NSW in the year 1861. I wonder if Sewjee and Ebaim were related, perhaps brothers with Sewjee being the younger of the two. Ebraim however it seems remained in India through to old age as he was recorded as purchasing a horse

 I have created this blog, if you can call it that in order to record my thoughts regarding the Alarakia side of my family. It is true that as a child I seemed to be the only one of my siblings to show any interest in my mothers family. I will not claim that as a truth as I am sure my siblings had the same thirst for knowledge as I. I probably just did not notice at the time. My younger days were often spent eliciting from my fathers family anything they knew about my mother and her family. As you can imagine they knew very little, but what they did helped me piece together what you see in this blog.  It is my intention to keep this as accurate as possible, however I would be grateful for any assistance from other family historians/researchers in verifying what is written. I am already indebted to a number of contributors to the Gwulo website who pointed me in the right direction or gave me previously unknown information. If it does not initially look like a blog as such it is because