A Family Reunited More Than a Century After The Rock Springs Massacre

ROCK SPRINGS — Ricky Leo came to the Fireside to Table Side dinner last week expecting a meal. He left with a cousin.

The June 18 event at Eve’s restaurant, organized by the Sweetwater County Historical Museum and Rock Springs Historical Museum to celebrate the chamber’s 90th anniversary and America’s 250th, drew together descendants of one of Rock Springs’ most storied Chinese American families in a reunion that none of them had planned.

Ricky, a Rock Springs native, and Kori Brown, who grew up in Minnesota as Kori Yee Litt, had never met. They share a common ancestor in Leo Yee Litt, a Chinese coal miner who Ricky said he believes was the last of the original Chinese coal miners to retire from the Rock Springs mines, doing so in 1927. A photograph of Leo and his son Robert at a farewell banquet given by the Union Pacific Coal Company hangs in the Sweetwater County Museum.

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Leo Yee Litt and his sons. Photo courtesy of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum.

The connection between the two families came to light only within the past year and a half, Brown said, through the work of Laura Ng, an archaeologist leading an ongoing excavation of Rock Springs’ historic Chinatown. Ng identified the family link and introduced the two branches of the Yee Litt family to each other.

Brown said walking into the Sweetwater County Museum for the first time was overwhelming.

“There is a picture of my great-great-grandfather on the wall in the museum,” she said. “There is a gong that he donated. There is a picture of Leo and Robert at this banquet. It was mind-blowing that my family was on display in a museum and I had no idea.”

Leo Yee Lit. Photo courtesy of the Sweetwater County Historical Museum.

That great-great-grandfather, Brown said, was the one Chinese coal miner who remained in Rock Springs after the 1885 Rock Springs Massacre, in which a mob of white miners killed at least 28 Chinese workers and drove hundreds more from the city. He raised seven children in Rock Springs, and his sons graduated from Rock Springs High School and went on to serve in World War II and the Korean War. Brown said her grandfather’s father received a Silver Star for his military service, something the family only learned recently when Ricky registered him for a congressional gold medal honoring Chinese American World War II veterans.

The family came to Rock Springs this week in part to participate in the ongoing Chinatown archaeological dig, spending a morning excavating artifacts from the site where their ancestor lived.

A chance encounter at the Rock Springs Historical Museum added another discovery to the week. While browsing the museum’s collection of Rock Springs High School yearbooks, including her grandfather’s 1944 graduation photograph, Brown’s family ran into the Rock Springs Fire Chief, James Wamsley. She mentioned where her great-grandfather’s house had stood and that a fire marshal lived there. Wamsley called the fire marshal and the group rushed over.

“That is the original house from Union Pacific,” Grace Leo said. “The family lived there, and they raised seven children there.”

The visit came with a deadline: the current owner is scheduled to demolish the structure within two weeks. The interior has already been gutted.

Ricky, for his part, has his own deep connection to Rock Springs’ Chinese American history. He is the model for the Requiem statue that now stands in front of the site of the old Chinatown, after artist David Allen Clark asked to use a 3D scan of Ricky’s likeness for the figure. Ricky’s wife, Grace, had initially expressed concern that an earlier design of the statue did not convey the dignity of the community it was meant to honor. The artist, Grace said, ultimately gave the figure’s face an expression of hope.