In 1908 a young girl by the name of Anna Whitney boarded the S.S. Mongolia steam boat docked in the port of Tsuruga on the north coast of Japan. Anna made her way to the third deck of the ship and peered down below to try and pick her parents Mary and Willis out from the crowd. As the boat launched and pulled away from the dock Anna waved her handkerchief until her parents were out of sight.
Anna was twelve years old at the time, and had spent her childhood years with her parents as a Quaker missionary in Japan. Her father, Dr Willis Norton Whitney, was an eye doctor from Newark, USA, his wife Mary was from Kendal in the English Lake District. At the age of twelve it was time for Anna to go to secondary school and so she was making the journey across land from Japan to England to continue her education
Last week, sitting in my grubby car in a car park outside my son’s dance class, I read Anna’s diary of her epic 10,000 + kilometre journey by water and land across the Sea of Japan and on over the breath of Russia, through Siberia to Moscow, onward through Germany and finally across the English channel and to Victoria station. Her account consisted of ten pages of type written pages, presumably transcribed at some point from a hand written journal entry. The pages and her story are of particular interest to me, because Anna was my maternal great grandmother.
.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Layla O’Mara’s Beauty & Bone to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.