Geraldine Melaan (Ah Ket) Williams (abt. 1918 - abt. 1978)

Born about 1918 in Caulfield, Victoria, Australia

Ancestors

Died about Feb 1978 at about age 60 in North Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Geraldine Melaan Ah Ket was born in about 1918 at or about Caulfield in Victoria Australia. She was the daughter of William Ah Ket and his wife Gertrude (nee Bullock.

Melaan Ah Ket married English musician Leonard Williams, known as Len, in around about 1940 in Australia. Their son John Williams who was born in 1941 in Melbourne, and became a world renowned Classical guitarist. He is listed in many places as the greatest guitarist of all time.

From John Williams Biography online we see:

John Christopher Williams was born in Melbourne, Australia on 24th April 1941. His father, Leonard Williams, had emigrated to Australia from London in the late 1930s, where he met his wife, Malaan, through a common love of jazz music and political activism.

This seems to be repeated and expanded upon in the radio broadcast on Australia's ABC Classic radio station in 2021, at the time of John's 80th Birthday:

Len met John's mum, Melaan Ah Ket at a jazz club in Melbourne. They also shared fairly radical left-wing views and actively supported causes like foreign aid for China and workers' rights. One of their frequent haunts was Melbourne's Speakers Corner. John gained his own strong sense of social engagement from his parents.

And also from the same broadcast:

In 1952, in part because Len had personal ambitions beyond Melbourne and also because they wanted to give John the best opportunities, the family moved to London, sailing on the RMS Orontes of the Orient Line. Len had even taken an additional job as a hippo-keeper at Melbourne Zoo to fund the move!

In an article about Len Williams titled: Len Williams: the man who started it all by George Clinton Len describes Melaan as:

a devastatingly beautiful lady... Before we married she had been the secretary to the Chinese Consul.

Thank you to Maureen McInroy for the following piece of information on Maureen's passing:

According to William Starling's 2013 book, Strings Attached: the life and music of John Williams, Melaan Ah Ket (later Williams, later still Bunting) died In February 1978 at the John Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford. She had earlier returned to Australia and been living in Sydney with her sister Toylaan but that had not worked out. So, with her health deteriorating due to emphysema she had entered a care home in Summerton, Oxford

Sources

• Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages. BIRTH: KET, Geraldine Melaan Marc - event: Birth - mother: Gert Victoria BULLOCK - father: Wm Ah - place of birth: CAULFIELD - registration year: 1918 - registration no. 26171/1918. first accessed online on the 16th of April, 2022 from the Victorian Family History Search searchable database at: https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/research-and-family-history/search-your-family-history

• John Williams (guitarist) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. first accessed online on the 16th of April, 2022 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Williams_(guitarist)

• Geraldine Melaan Ah Kett - 1918 – 29 January 1976 - 976K-CC3. on FAMILY SEARCH. first accessed online on the 16th of April, 2022 at: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/976K-CC3

• John Williams Biography from the John Williams: The Guitarist website. first accessed online on the 16th of April, 2022 at: http://plum.cream.org/williams/biography.htm

• Len Williams: the man who started it all by George Clinton. via the Digitarrist Blog. first accessed online on the 16th of April, 2022 at: https://digitarristblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/intervju-len-williams-oktober-78-vol.8-n3.pdf

• Asian Studies Program: Chinese Australia: William Ah Ket - Building Bridges between Occident and Orient in Australia, 1900-1936 By Toylaan Ah Ket. archived from the LaTrobe University: Humanities and Social Sciences website. (NOTE: The author, Toylaan Ah Ket, is the daughter of William Ah Ket and the younger sister of Melaan. This paper is based on a paper she gave at the Conference of the Chinese Studies Association in Australia held at Macquarie University on 5 July 1995) first accessed online on the 23rd of March, 2022 at: https://web.archive.org/web/20080719145218/http://www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/stories/wahket.htm

• John Williams at 80 as broadcast on Tuesday 27 Apr 2021 as viewed on the ABC Classic radio website. accessed on the 16th of April, 2022 at: https://www.abc.net.au/classic/programs/legends/legends-john-williams-at-80/13302750

• email from Maureen McInroy dated August 15, 2023.