Origins of Carcar families

Legend:

mS= mestizo Sangley (Chinese-descent)

mE= mestizo Español (Spanish-descent)

 

 

Of all the towns in Cebu, Carcar may have the most number of families coming from different places to settle here. While 26 kilometers further down the road Argao, with the biggest land area, and the largest population, would have been the most enticing for prospective migrants in terms of arable land and size of market, but its distance from the city may have worked against it. I know we are working up our imagination here but maybe the settlers’ stamina could take them up only to the next biggest town, Carcar. Or maybe the old clans of Argao were far more entrenched so that the social dynamics of the town were more rigid, making living in the town not as convivial for outsiders—especially to ambitious out-of-towners. Or Carcar’s chicharron was just so other-worldly no sense going farther…

Anyway, early parish records of Carcar afford us a peek at the origins of families, so we can sort these immigrant Carcar families according to origin. Church records usually identified individuals as natural y vecino de (native and resident of). You will meet a phrase like “naturales de San Nicolas, vecinos de este pueblo” to refer to, say, the parents of a bride or groom in a marriage, or of a child that was baptized.

Doing that, we find the two biggest groups to be from Bohol and Cebu City. The Boholanos arrived earlier, although we cannot tell if they arrived together a whole bunch of them, but we can determine a number of these families were in Carcar already around 1800. It is noteworthy, however, that their coming over to Carcar coincided somewhat with the period when the pursuit of the remaining Dagojoy rebels in Bohol was at its hottest. Meanwhile, the families from Cebu City probably started arriving in a stream around the 1830s, and there may also be significance to that, historians can always pull a rabbit from the hat.

Here are the groupings. I apologize to the many other families not finding their names on this list. In boldface are families that produced a chief executive (gobernadorcillo, presidente, etc., or mayor) of Carcar.

Bohol. Carcar church records of the Spanish period are frustrating for researchers and genealogists in that 9.9 times out of ten they name only Bohol as the origin. The church scribes could have been more specific and forgiving to future researchers if only they’d written down the particular towns and not just distrito or provincia de Bohol.

The Boholano families:

Aldemita, Aldeon, Aldevera, Aleguiojo, Alemios (originally Alemeus), Aleoguens, Aleonar, Alfafaras (Loon), Baracao, Barateria, Barbon (Dimiao), Barcelos (Dimiao), Bargeo, Bitor (Inabanga), Campanilla, Campoy, Camuñas (also Camonias), Camuta, Canasa, Crystal, Dagojoy, Dayagdal, Dayaona, Diapera (originally Dayapira), Emnace, Emnacen, Empleo, Enad, Escobido (Anda), Fano, Galicano, Genodefanon, Genteroy (Dimiao), Gucor, Langbid, Laorden, Pananganan, Pangadlo, Propios, Quijon, Quijoy, Ramos, Sasuman, Sato(t), Saucejo, Simporios, Sinajon, Tangaro, Tangarorang, Taning (Baclayon), Tenieblas, Umbay (Dawis), Wasay. Meanwhile, Donato Regis’s second (c. 1850) wife, Juana Falcon, was a mestiza Española from Tagbilaran.

Cebu City: Families from Cebu City are more complicated to sort out because of the additional racial classifications. (Boholanos have no such problems because except for the Regis wife, all of them were classified indios.) But for Cebu City, there are families which were consistently recorded as mestizo Sangley (and mostly from Parian). But some, even if identified as originally from Cebu City, did not have the mS classification mentioned in any record I encountered of the family. Thus, for the record, I do not yet have mS records for Aldave, Alegrado, Cacafranca, Flores, Montesclaros, Rallos (the Rallos below), Ramas, Rodis, Saducas, Sobrevilla, Tenchavez. Not that they were not mS, because since they were said to be from Cebu City and prior to 1900, they very probably were, only I just need to have a record to confirm it for me before I myself go around hailing everybody with the fact.

Also, we now know that prior to 1850, Parian was independent of the Ciudad. Other towns/parishes that were once independent of Cebu City were Mabolo, Pardo, Talamban, etc. San Nicolas, which Pardo branched from, will be treated separately:

D. Francisco Rallos, coadjutor of Argao, was buried in Carcar in 1871. His parentage is there up to his grandfather, Hilario, who was said to be natural of the Ciudad, but it also said indio. The Cebu City Rallos family was pretty prominent (a Cebu City mayor) and very probably were mestizo Sangley, or even mestizo Español. But why would this family of the priest say they were indios, presuming they were the respondents to this record? And the Carcar priest who signed over the record I assume would’ve known his fellow priests’ parentage, so few of them at such an early period. Unless, and this is for lovers of intrigue, there was a willful “downgrading” going on.

Anyway, the Cebu City families:

Alcorcon (mS), Alcudia (mS), Aldocente (mS), Alegrado, Alo (mS), Apura (Mabolo), Avila (mS, originally Jimena/Ximena), Barcenilla (mS), Base (mS), Cacafranca, Castro (mS), Cui (mS), Cuico (mS), del Mar (mS), Flores, Florido (mS), Fortich (mE, Manila), Gantuangco (mS), Garces (mS), Gemperoso, Gonzalez, Jaen (mS), Machacon (mS), Medalle (mS), Mercado (mS), Mercado (Manila), Montesclaros, Noel (mS), Nuñez (mS), Osmeña (mS), Poncardas (mS), Quijano (mS), Rallos, Ramas, Rayla (mS), Regis (mS), Rodis, Saducas, Sagolili (mS), Sarmiento (mS), Sobrevilla, Solon (mS), Tenchavez, Urgello (mS), Velez (mS), Veloso (mS), Villarosa (mS), Yap (mS);

San Nicolas: Abella, Abellana, Abellaneda, Abellanosa, Aguilar, Aldave, Atillo, Bacalso, Baclay, Bacon, Binoya, Borres, Caballero, Caballes, Cavan (originally Caban), dela Cerna, Enriquez, Fernandez, Gutierrez, Losada, Macasero (also Mabolo), Nacua, Nadela, Paculaba, Padin, Racho, Rama, Ramos, Verano (via Aloguinsan), Yburan;

Pardo, Talisay and Minglanilla: Abellaneda (Talisay), Alenton (Talisay), Alforque (Minglanilla), Bacus (Talisay), Baritua (Minglanilla), Cabañero (Minglanilla), Cabigas (Talisay), Canchiller (Talisay), Daan (Talisay), Delima (Talisay, with variant de Lima), Echavez (Talisay), Fernandez (Talisay), Gabiola (Talisay), Gabrillo (Pardo), Juario, Larrobis (Minglanilla), Manca (Talisay), Nacario (Talisay), Nadela (Pardo, Minglanilla, Talisay from San Nicolas), Paculaba (Talisay from San Nicolas), Pagusara (Talisay), Unabia (Minglanilla);

Mandaue, Opon, Cordova: Baring (Opon), Del Corro (mE, Cebu City), Languido (Opon), Lapinid (Opon), Pugoy (Cordova), Ramos, Satinitigan (Mandaue), Siacor (Mandaue), Tangkay (Opon, including the variants Tancay and Tangcay);

Northern Cebu: Lepiten (Bogo), Montecillo (Sogod), Robles (mE, Danao);

Southern Cebu: Alerre (Boljoon), Baquilir (Argao), Calomarde (Dalaguete), Carpintero (Sibonga), Davide (Argao), Dayondon (Boljoon), Dayonot (Boljoon), Jacosalem (Barili), Ortiz (Sibonga), Torres (Sibonga), Vasquez (Sibonga, Cebu City), Villanueva (Sibonga), Ynfantado (Dalaguete), Zozobrado (Dumanjug);

Negros, Iloilo: Torres (Negros), Molina (Iloilo);

Luzon: Lakandazon (Pandacan, Manila), San Diego (Bulacan via Cebu City), Tagimacruz (Cavite via San Nicolas), Valencia (Bulacan);

Spain: del Corro (Cebu City via Opon), Fortich (via Manila), Rodriguez (Cebu City via Sibonga), Silva.

China: Yap (via Parian), Yap, Jo Reynes, Lao-Cong (via Bohol), Uy.

The Baring families. Not the British banking family, who were themselves originally from Germany, like every other banking family was, and had the surnames even before the 1700s—not they, but our own here.

The Bareng family of Carcar had that surname spelt that way from the beginning of Claveria, with an “e”. Moreover, there is no mention of their having come from outside Carcar. But ever since a Baring family from Opon–with the “i”–came to Carcar around the 1880s, it seemed our native Barengs lost out on the brow-beating contest, or spelling bee or however it was they settled the matter back then, and everyone in Carcar now seems to be a Baring with an “i”. Colonial mentality?

The original Barengs in Carcar may have originally come from Opon? There is no mention of that and since several branches of the family were already in Carcar much earlier than the Claveria decree, so we do not know how they would have been able to remember that their ancestor had come from Opon even just three generations before, and so decided to revise the spelling of their name accordingly.

But history then was folklore* and families may have handed down those origin stories around bonfires for generations–we can allow for that. Handed down those origin stories so solemnly that some of these stories even go all the way back to when their starting person emerged from a bamboo stalk. [Sorry, we should be more deferential than this, sorry.] Incidentally, the catálogo de apellidos (the list of surnames which accompanied Clavería’s decree and where almost all the surnames in the country were taken from), has both Bareng and Baring.

Native Carcar families? While we can group all other families to have been in Carcar earlier than the above groups and call them the “native” families, yet it is possible that they also had originally come from either Bohol, Cebu City, San Nicolas, etc.—only they arrived in Carcar even much much earlier. Much much earlier even than the earliest available records, and precluding our ever knowing.

So, for lack of my records to classify them, these families would be:

Alcontin, Alcordo, Alcorisa, Alcos, Alcoseba, Alcover, Alcoy, Alcuetas, Alcuezar, Aldaya, Aledo, Alega, Alegado, Alejado, Alesna, Alfafara, Alison (originally Aleson), Alvarado (originally Albarado and Albarada), Baran, Barangan, Barbadillo, Barcelo, Barcenas, Bardenas (and Bardinas), Bareng, Bargamento, Bargayo, Camomot, Campaña, Campugan, Canarias, Canaya, Canencia, Cuison, Dayagro, Dayanan (including the variant Dainan), Deitec (originally Daytec), Dayondon, Gempesao, Heludo, Lañas, Lapinid, Mancao, Manguiran, Mangruban (originally Manguroban), Navarro, Panimdim, Paningsoro (originally Paningesoro), Paraz, Satira (and Satera), Varga (originally Barga), Villalta (originally Villaalta), Volante, Ybañez, etc., etc, etc.

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*Can anyone picture a history class in 1820: [trans.]”Pedro [the future Pedro Bareng of Carcar], who discovered the Philippines?” “Magellan, Sir.”? “And (whispering) who killed Magellan?” “My ancestor in Mactan–Lapu-Lapu, Sir.”