Finding ancestors in Asia.

[lanz83]

What is the best site to find ancestors in the Philippines and China?

[jorose]

Are these people originally from China and the Philippines, or British persons who were temporarily resident there (or "other")?
What time period are you searching in?

[dennford]

How far back in the Philippines?

Unfortunately Chinese Filipino are a minority group who's records for many years were oral _ the Chinese avoided officialdom where possible.

However here are a couple of sites that may help.

Firstly a FAQ from the national statistics office.
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/civilreg/

Then a research outline.
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/RG/frameset_rg.asp?Dest=G1&Aid=&Gid=&Lid=&Sid=&Did=&Juris1=&Event=&Year=&Gloss=&Sub=&Tab=&Entry=&Guide=Philippines.ASP

As you probably know, the Spanish occupied the Philippines for a long time and they were very keen record keepers; the unfortunate thing is that not all the ethnic groups within the archipelago were cooperative.

Denn

[dennford]

Oh! I forgot to ask, do you speak any of the languages; Spanish, Visayan or Tagalog?

It would help.

Denn

[lanz83]

Thanks so much for your help!

Yes I do speak Tagalog.  I will check out those sites. At the moments I am trying to find anything between 1800-1900's

[Nick29]

There is a Chinese version of Ancestry, which you can access if you have World Membership.

Quite hard to navigate if you can't read Chinese, but the layout is much the same as the English & American versions.

[dennford]

At the moments I am trying to find anything between 1800-1900's

Okay, up until 1889/1890 records I believe were kept by the local clergy. From that date it was compulsory to report births and deaths to the Central Estadística ( a division of the Spanish government); however that was not nessesarily always complied with for many reasons until around 1930.

Another complication arises in that if your records are post 1889/1890 the Philippines - like England; had many records destroyed during WW2.

Records prior to 1889 if made in the first instance would I imagine have some chance of still being available because they were usually kept in the respective local church and are therefore spread around the country.


Denn