CARCAR FAMILIES: A Genealogy Blog for Carcar

Three- or four-maybe five-generation trees. This is a test broadcast.  I’m looking at how wordpress takes on family trees and family tree formats. Trying on themes, too. For instance, this one does not take too kindly to tables (Kabkad* in the time of Kolera (1883))

A note on these trees.  Where I was not yet able to find exact records to reconstruct the correct sequence of children, I had to rely on guesswork, basing many sequences you’ll find here on other indirect clues, like their respective marriages, or  births of their own children.  I had to decide that the older ones got married ahead, which is not always true of course, but better that, with some semblance of thought, rather than an entirely random order, and I hope family genealogists would agree, be it grudgingly, because family respondents usually have their own sequences, too.

The absence of earlier records (1600-1800), coupled with the difficulty of tracing each because of the non-existence of surnames yet, make it extremely hard to say who are the older families of Carcar, and this means either the really native ones or, if migrant, the much much earlier comers. We can only suspect that the oldest families must be the ones who would have had several branches already by the time of the records. And yet, it’s possible that at the time of the Claveria surnames, families may not even have remembered anymore who was related to whom, except for really closer ones, say up to second or third cousins, when those cousins could still establish their kinship and ask for the same surname. On that note, it may really be true after all what is always said in Carcar, that the Al- families were related to each other. Except, I dare say, for those that can be established to have originated from elsewhere.  For example, my own Aleonar family, whose first ancestor in Carcar came from Bohol, would be one of those exceptions, as would the Aldemita and Aleguiojo. Alcorcon and Alcudia came from Parian and Aldave from San Nicolas. But then who can say that the Bohol or Parian or San Nicolas ancestors had not also originally come from Carcar, went to those places and some descendants then came back to the land of their origin, Carcar?

Abbreviations I frequently resort to and found plentifully in these trees are “(pnc)” and “pDn”. Pnc is short for padre no conocido (father not known/recognized), the formulaic term used for illegitimate offsprings. The term remained in use well into the American era and every church and civil registry clerk knows what this means, as do genealogists. In these cases, the child is given the surname of the mother, which practice belies the belief of some families that the surnames they are using they got from an ancestor who was a Spanish priest. The more they could not use that surname obviously! Meanwhile, I use the parentheses for a partner who was not married to the person.

PDn means simply pre-Decree (Claveria) name, when the individual was still known as before 1849 or 1850, in the case of Carcar around May 1850 when the decree appears to have been implemented.  I use this abbreviation for when an individual was still using two first names and also even when the individual was actually already using the surname (mestizo Español and a few indio families).

There is also this matter like the Alfafaras surname distinct from Alfafara.

We have these two Carcar families, the Barcelos and the Alfafaras (also recorded as Alcaparas), and the first is also a different family from Barcelo.  The Emnace and Emnacen surnames are also two separate families. The four families most probably got the surnames in Carcar already.  I say that not just because the four belong to alphabetic surname groups of Carcar (Al-, Bar-, Cam-, Can-, Day-, Em-, etc.) but because all four came from Bohol–no notation as to their town origin has been found for Emnace and Emnacen but Barcelos is from Dimiao while one or two indirect records say the Alfafaras was from Loon.

But the Alfafaras surname may have died out because I have only 4 Alfafaras children–all girls. Anyway they were Catalina (married to Leon Alcudia), Dorotea (married to Tomas Aleonar), Remigia (married to Marquez Alcover) and Cornelia (married to Agustin Aldeon). However, Catalina has been identified also as Alcesto (Alcerto?) and as Cavan.

By the way, when you’re looking for a female in-law, look for her maiden name.  My family reconstructions always retain the maiden name for a woman. Incidentally, it seems it was that way during the Spanish era, too, and it was only in the American system when our women lost their surnames in favor of their husbands’. If you don’t know who a female family member married, you’d be groping blindly trying to search for her death or burial records. But if she’d just retain her family name, she’d be far easier to locate. I think even until now, Spain and France, they at least, still identify women by their maiden surnames. For example, a lady might be known around as Almudena Señora de Ruiz but her official name remains Almudena Acuña.