CARCAR FAMILIES: A Genealogy Blog for Carcar

[19-Sep-2012]

Latid

The Visayan term latid means to draw the lines, to plot, to lay out, and is still very much in use by carpenters and builders. Or for all we know the word could have had another more ancient meaning.

There is no place Latid in Carcar today but the old parish books of the town were so full of it, and it was probably the most inhabited of the places of Carcar mentioned in those old books. But it took some years to settle my mind on where this place Latid could have been.

Since most of the families on the records as living in that place Latid had Al- surnames, I at first thought it must have been the Guadalupe of today. Or that mountain area that straddles between Carcar and Barili. Especially since that is where Al- families are plentiful. And especially also that at that time, I never came across the place name Guadalupe in the records, not until the late 1860s, none before that. Meanwhile, books from 1820s already mentioned Latid.

I had a talk with Argao genealogist Todd Sales at the Mormon reading center maybe 6 years about the placename and he said Latid was the former name of the Argao poblacion. But no one in Carcar could say anything about Carcar’s Latid so, oh well, how did Todd come across the connection?

As I said, but after years, but I’m now fine with Latid being the present poblacion 2 area—Santa Catalina, Burgos, General Luna—as this road network does appear like a plotted subdivision–linatid.

But did Latid also include the sides and back around the church hill, the P. Vasquez-San Jose-F. Noel-round to Gen. Luna streets, of present Poblacion 1, as these too look to be the natural continuation of the plot? But if we do that — include that circumferential as Latid — where in the world would have been Luanluan with which we refer to that entire area today? if we disconnect that road, that may possibly place Luanluan as just from the banks of the river to the camarin. Oh well, possibly, because that’d be the only place where people could have luan (get on board), and not anymore anywhere around the hill. But don’t entertain latter-day ideas about the name: Luanluan was not about the railroad, the place name was in existence already in 1830s records, so it must have been about the river.

And yet, why didn’t they call Latid the Poblacion already, since it was the center of the town? Well, we now know that the term poblacion then meant population (and is still used as such in Spanish-speaking countries) and not the town center, as the term poblacion later came to mean in the Philippines.

Anyway…a physical description in the sale of the Aldocente house and yard (to Florencio Noel who then remodeled the house to what it is today) in 1873 mentioned calle Real as the property’s eastern boundary. So that was what Santa Catalina street was called in 1873—calle Real! Maybe that was what they called main streets throughout the country — calle Real, King’s Street.

Here are some families residing in Latid in the years 1850-60:

This list is not a complete one of Latid residents.

[20-Sep-2012]: To be fair, here are some more Latid residents during the period: Petrona Aldave, mother of Ynocenta Aldave, second wife of Custodio Angel del Corro, who was also from Latid. As well as Juana Nuñez, the mother of Fr. Anastasio del Corro. And, of course, Roman Sarmiento and wife Ana Canarias. Some VIPs got omitted.

Andres Gimena (No. 59), by the 1870s had taken on another surname, Avila, and to this day, Avila is what the family is known as.

Note also that during this period there were at least 17 cabezas de barangay having jurisdiction over the residents. Since Latid is just one place, and could rightfully be called a barrio, I take the many cabezas as evidence that the barangay was not the same as the barrio and it was just a grouping of individuals for tax and tribute purposes. For sure, these same cabezas also had other members in their barangays who did not reside in Latid.