Mads Johansen Lange - Descendants

Descendants

Mads Lange never married. His whole life he hoped to marry his cousin Ida Bay, who was ten years younger than him. He sent her letters and gifts, but the feeling was clearly not mutual and she did not even comment on the letter with the marriage proposal from the east.

On Bali Mads Lange fathered three children with two women. One was a Balinese woman named Njai Kenjèr or Nyai Kenyèr. His second wife was a Chinese woman who Mads calls Nonna Sangnio, which means "Miss" or "Mistress".

He had three children in total. With Nyai Kenyèr he had William Peter (1843) and Andreas Emil (1850), and with Nonna Sangnio he had Cecilia Catharina (1848).

Both his sons went to school in Singapore. William Peter died here at twelve years of age. Andreas Emil was educated at the Raffles Institute. He married a Malaysian woman and had several children. His descendants live in Singapore and Australia. Former New-Zealand prime-minister David Lange, who is known to be of Danish ancestry, is descended from a different branch of the family according to himself.

Daughter Cecilia was sent to Singapore when she was seven years old, to receive an education at a convent school. The next years Mads Lange died, and she was adopted by an English family. They took her on holidays to Europe and India. She received a thorough education, which proved to be of great use when she returned to Singapore in 1870. Here she met Abu Bakar, the ruler of Johor. He fell in love with her and was so smitten he ignored all the custom stereotypes that in those days stood in the way of a marriage between a full-blooded Malay man and a Eurasian woman. They married and Cecilia took the name Zubaidah. She was not Abu Bakar's first wife however. And when her husband, with British blessing, became sultan in 1885, it was his third wife Fatima who received the title of sultana. Cecilia was named "Inch Besar Zubaidah", a title bestowed upon wives of the sultan who were not sultana. But in contrast to his other wives, it was Cecilia who bore him a son and continued the dynasty. Her son Ibrahim is a descendant of Mads Lange, and his family sits on the throne of Johor to this very day.