CARCAR FAMILIES: A Genealogy Blog for Carcar

My genealogies project started in 2004 really only for the Aleonar, Barcelo and Alegado families. But as I read the microfilms at the Mormon Family History Center in Lahug, I realized it would be such a waste not to include other families, something that might interest or even benefit the entire town. So I also made notes of as many individuals and families as I could.  As of this writing, I have data for 235 families, of course in various stages of completion, many of them containing just three individuals – parents and a child.

But some unkindly people whose sole achievement in life can be summarized on just being unkind as a lifetime undertaking, has been calling to question my project, insinuating that I am making much money out of this. While it’s true some people of their opposite kind had handed contributions (more like alms) to me, these were unsolicited and came from their own goodness. Perhaps these people should ask individuals with whom I have collaborated with their family trees if I ever did what things wormed their way to their suggestible minds.

Even if I have been jobless (both by choice and I have no choice) the past almost 7 years, and have to stretch what’s left of my savings together with the fund from these kind souls, I simply gave out and even volunteered information I have gathered to Carcaranons who asked for, or who I felt needed, my data. They can witness to my never asking for anything material in return. My only requisite, however, is they also share what they know of their own family trees, so the project is updated –what I call a quid-pro-quo arrangement.  That’s because I always look on this as a town project, I’m just the secretary/researcher.

My Carcar families files are stored in the house desktop owned by my sister in Cebu City, to which I return regularly every four or five days to encode my notes therein to update the files.

Of course, without the free board from my family (including cousin Mario Aleonar’s children in Carcar), and when I am in Carcar, from the convento, I would have gotten so emaciated to have strength to continue this lifetime passion.  When in Carcar, my over-riding concerns are to put down as much data from the books as I possibly can, and, shamelessly, where to buy my cheapest meal.  Many times, childhood friend and neighbor Sesinio (Jr) and Nieves Villaluz and family, elementary classmate Boboy Abellana and family and Jun and Gigi Tupas, have asked me to stay for lunch or supper.  Vivisima Alesna, my father’s high school classmate, never fails to provide refreshments (and often lunch or dinner) when I come to consult her — for which reason I try not to do that too often even if, were I asked, she would be the first person I’d go to to ask about Carcar. Many are the times I’ve hitched a ride going back to Cebu City from Jun and Gigi, too. A lifestyle hardly in keeping to one making mounds of dough from solicitations for the project.

I feel like a Buddhist monk.

Anyway, from the kindest souls:

Bishop Jose R. Manguiran (Dipolog)

–   4,000  (2006, 2008, 2011)

Yap families (AUS and PHI)

– 31,600  (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 equivalent)

Adolfo C. Tigley (CAN)

–    1,500  (2007)

Roselito de los Reyes (USA)

– Hewlett-Packard scanner (CanoScan LIDE 50)

– IBM laptop (R32 ThinkPad 6GB HDD Windows 98)

Leo V. Alegado (USA)

– external hard drive (Verbatim USB120, 120G)

Sonia Aleonar-Lao (Mandaue City)

–      500

Alfredo S. Mancao III (Cebu City)

– 10 GB internal hard disk drive and Windows XP for the ThinkPad and technical consultations (2010-11).

Apple Campañon Botass (MA, USA) 2012

–   4128

— o0o —

“Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.”  –  Ernest Hemingway