William Cheeks’ Lost Passport

“I was the bearer of Department passport No.66974, issued by the Secretary of State on March 1, 1919, which was extended by the American Vice Consul at Vladivostok, Siberia, on October 7, 1919. I applied for this passport at Vladivostok, Siberia. While in Osaka, Japan, in December 1919, this passport was stolen from me while riding on a tram. I applied at the American Consulate at Kobe, Japan, in January 1920, for a Department of State passport but was not able to complete the application owing to the fact that I did not have the funds at that time with which to pay the fee for the passport.” Signed, William Henry Cheeks.

On August 5, 1920, presumably after all the concerts were finished, William Henry Cheeks applied for an emergency passport at the American Consulate in Seoul, Chosen. His passport was stolen on a tram in Osaka, but he didn’t have enough money to apply for a new one there and then. This rather unfortunate incident was what led me to discover the identity of the third man, referred to as ‘Chik-seu’ in the Korean papers, and in so doing, helped me confirm the identities of Lewis and Payne.

By searching for an African-American man born in the mid 1800s called “Cheeks” (which I deduced from the name “Chik-seu”), I came upon a treasure of information in the U.S Passport Applications 1795-1925 archives. As a travelling musician, William Cheeks had applied for passports numerous times, from locations as diverse as Riga, Vladivostok, Calcutta, and Seoul.

From his passport applications, I found that he had been living in European countries from around 1897, and presumably with the outbreak of the First World War, his tours extended to East Asia. His emergency passport application also revealed that the three men: Payne, Lewis and Cheeks had been performing as a trio – known as the “Louisiana Trio”.

“Mr. Cheeks and the ‘Louisiana Trio’ have been performing voluntarily for American soldiers at the Y.M.C.A. in Harbin, and has volunteered similar services for American soldiers and sailors in Vladivostok.“³

In this 1919 passport application submitted by all three men in Vladivostok, we can get a glimpse of their tours in Europe and Asia. As it was common during wartime, the Louisiana Trio seemed to have been performing for American soldiers stationed in various military and YMCA outposts. During wartime, the YMCA had its own music department that held music competitions and equipped army camps with pianos, gramophones and even cinema theatres⁴.

(Left: Open air performance near the front⁵. Right: Open air film projection for Indian and British troops in Mesopotamia⁶)

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Life and Death of the Louisiana Trio

From the numerous passport applications and census documents, I was able to slowly put together a portrait of the lives of the three men known as the Louisiana Trio. From their humble beginnings in rural United States as a farm labourer, or the son of a carpenter, they went on to live worldly lives as voyaging musicians. In this journey, they came upon Korea, and delivered an unforgettable series of concerts which broke language barriers and at times, left audiences “holding their backs and stumbling in laughter” (with their harmony of “meows”).

I’d like to end this three-part series with a glimpse of their lives, from the beginning to the end.

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Charles Wesley Payne

Charles Wesley Payne was born on the 7th of February 1856 (*his birth year ranges from 1849 to 1861, but this date is the one he consistently uses in his passport applications), in Palmyra, Fluvanna, Virginia, USA. His father was Richard Payne, who was described as a “native, part Indian”, and Payne himself was described as a “mulatto”. By age 21, he was a farm labourer, who lived with his parents and 8 siblings, and was illiterate. His first daughter was born in 1880, and he married (presumably) the mother of his child, Bertha A Norris in 1886 in Boston, by which time he was already travelling abroad and performing as a singer. They had two more children. In 1894, he married Elizabeth A Jordan, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By 1911, he had residence in Liverpool, England, and was described as “widowed”. He travelled extensively throughout Europe as part of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and eventually formed his own musical band with Charles Lewis, Jefferson Caldwell and Charles Johnston. He continued performing and travelling all around the world until his death in Amritsar, India, in 1921 at the age of 65.

Charles Henry Lewis

Charles Henry Lewis was born in Columbus, Franklin, Ohio, USA, on the 8th of March 1868. His father was David Lewis, and his wife was Anna Lewis. His child Jefferson Wesley Lewis was born in London on the 6th of February, 1903 and was christened in St.Paul’s, Deptford (his race was recorded as “w” – “w” for “white”?). His permanent residence in the United States was in Indianapolis, but he had lived throughout Europe and Asia. He had known Charles Payne since 1893, and was part of the Original American Jubilee Singers troupe with Payne, and performed as the first tenor while they toured Europe between 1895 and 1896. Throughout the First World War and the years that followed, Lewis toured the world with Payne and Cheeks as part of the Louisiana Trio. Unfortunately, there is no record of his death.

William Henry Cheeks

William Henry Cheeks was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA, on the 15th of August 1868. His father was Moulton Cheeks, a carpenter, who had become “a citizen of the United States by Abraham Lincoln Court of Emancipation Proclamation”, which means he was one of more than 3.5 million African-Americans who were freed from slavery. In the 1880 census, the 11 year old William, first child Moulton and Ellen Cheeks, was recorded as being in the “house of refuge”, which was a juvenile detention centre at the time, which committed boys and girls for vagrancy and petty crimes⁷. By 1897, he had left the United States for Europe. His wife was Ellen Cheeks, was born in Eastbourne, England, and they had a child, Frederick William Cheeks, who was born in Portsmouth, England, on the 4th of October, 1903. Sadly, “Freddie” had already passed away by 1919. Cheeks had known Lewis since 1904, and had travelled and performed with the Louisiana Trio at least until 1920. It is not known what happened to the Louisiana Trio after the death of Charles Payne in 1921, but Cheeks seemed to have remained in Asia at least for some time afterwards. At 6:00AM, September 27th, 1939, the 72 year old William Cheeks died of “croupous pneumonia” at the Central Civil Hospital in Batavia, Java, Netherlands Indies. He was buried in the British Anglican section of Djati Petamboeran Cemetry in Batavia (present day Jarkarta). A letter was sent to his brother, to his permanent address in Owego, Virginia.

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Other posts in this series:

1. First Concert by African-American Singers Held in Korea
2. Charles Payne and the Black Troubadours

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Footnotes

1. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; Volume #: Volume 001: Seoul, Chosen
2. Ancestry.com. U.S., Passport Applications, 1795-1925 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2007.
3. “United States Passport Applications, 1795-1925,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99X3-STQC?cc=2185145&wc=3XZW-YWG%3A1056306501%2C1056592701 : 22 December 2014), (M1490) Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925 > Roll 714, 1919 Feb-Mar, certificate no 66750-66999 > image 766 of 836; citing NARA microfilm publications M1490 and M1372 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.)
4. For more info see: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/young_mens_christian_association_ymca
5. “Music and Entertainment in the Trenches”. https://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/singing-and-fighting/music-and-entertainment-in-the-trenches.html
6. ‘Unparalleled Opportunities’: The Indian Y.M.C.A.’s Army Work Schemes for Imperial Troops During the Great War (1914–1920) – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-front-cover-illustration-of-a-YMCA-brochure-published-in-1916-shows-an-open-air_fig4_327298704 [accessed 22 Jan, 2022]
7. “The design of the proposed institution is, to furnish, in the first place, an asylum, in which boys under a certain age, who become subject to the notice of our police, either as vagrants, or homeless, or charged with petty crimes, may be received, judiciously classed according to their degree of depravity or innocence, put to work at such employments as will tend to encourage industry and ingenuity, taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, and most carefully instructed in the nature of their moral and religious obligations while at the same time, they are subjected to a course of treatment, that will afford a prompt and energetic corrective of their vicious propensities, and hold out every possible inducement to reformation and good conduct.” See more here: http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/2011/02/03/punishing-children-houses-of-refuge-juvenile-justice/