History has always fascinated me. I have always felt that to move forward, you also need to understand your past. Knowing where you came from would lead to understanding why things are the way they are. With that understanding, you can know the best way to move forward. You can learn from the mistakes of the past to be better. Or you can learn what they did right back then that you can apply today.
Researching my ancestry has been very difficult. Asking my parents even when I was younger did not lead to promising leads or answers. None of those who were older than me could give me the answers to the questions I had about my ancestors. It is also especially difficult to research this in the Philippines. Written records are difficult to access and they are only up to a certain period. Anything earlier would have been lost to history.
There are a lot of ancestry websites out there that I’ve tried. I have been lucky enough to find Family Search to be the most useful. I’ve learned more about my ancestry through the site than I have through my relatives themselves. There has always been speculation about our family’s origins on both sides of the family. Finding old records through Family Search has been very helpful.
Family Search and their records are a work in progress. I find that there is more and more information that I can access as the years go by. I hope to get an even clearer picture of my roots once they add more information and scanned records.
It’s been fascinating to get confirmation about our heritage. My maternal aunts have spoken about having Spanish and Chinese roots. As Filipinos, we are often told that this is something that all Filipinos say. Some have said that only a small percentage are actually of Spanish or Chinese descent.
I have traced my ancestry back to the grandparents of my great-grandparents. I’m unsure exactly how many generations that would be to be honest. I found that they were part of the elite in society back in the early 1800s. Records indicate that my great-grandfather even held a government position.
Based on historical research, the labels used for him, his wife, and his children suggest one of two things. They were either of pure Spanish descent or had intermarried with Filipinos. I haven’t found any clue as to the Chinese heritage on this side of the family yet. Still, it is something I would love to learn more about. There is a higher possibility to trace records from when the family was still in China. That is if I am lucky to find their original names.
The side that has confirmed Chinese heritage has been on my father’s side of the family. Tracing back to (again) the early 1800s, my ancestors were labeled as Chinese mestizos. This means they were most likely mixed Chinese or of Chinese and Filipino heritage. It would be exciting if I could learn their Chinese names so I could trace this back further.
There’s something interesting about learning more about my roots. After all, they were just people like me trying to make it through life given the resources that they had. I know I would learn nothing about their personalities from this, but it is still interesting. It would be great to learn about the kind of life they had lived. About how we got to where we are from their humble beginnings.
Sometimes I envy other countries who have preserved very early records for this. It makes it easier for people to trace their ancestry. I think I would have to stop my research on the Spanish era. That's about the earliest records available about the people in the country. Unless I can trace the names of my Spanish and Chinese ancestors, that is the earliest I can go.
Each piece of information I find feels like a part of the big puzzle that is my heritage. I don’t know if can learn more in the future or not at this point. But I am eager to pass this knowledge on to the younger generations of the family. I hope they can keep learning as more information becomes available. That way, we can all appreciate the family we came from and the family we have become today.
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