Administration of the Northeastern Islands

During an interview with the family of House no. 22E, it was found that the family is descended from Sulong bin Endut, the founder of Kampung Surau. Sulong is the son of Endut bin Senin, a Pulau Ubin pioneer with a road on the island named after him, who would have arrived in Pulau Ubin around the 1850s or 1860s. Within this family, Abdul Latiff bin Ahmad, the uncle of the former owner of the house, Cik Ahmad Kassah, had served as headman of Kampung Surau, and in an interview with the oral archives in 1988, he recounts a memory that permission for Sulong, his great grandfather, to found a pioneer settlement for agriculture and other purposes would have been sought from the Sultan in Kampung Gelam.

Altogether 11 of Tengku Abdul Jalil’s children, i.e. Sultan Hussein’s grandchildren, his 4th to 14th were born on Tekong, the eldest of whom was born on the island in 1844. A century later in the 1940s, Tengku Ahmad, a fourth generation descendant of Sultan Hussein, born on Tekong Besar in 1901, is on the record as the headman administering the northeastern islands of Singapore, namely Tekong Besar, Tekong Kechil, Ubin, Ketam, Seranggong (the proper name for Serangoon), Sajahat, Unum, and Sanyongkong. The northeastern islands listed above were all administered from Pulau Tekong Besar. This was the administrative structure from the 1840s till the 1960s.