Found on FamilySearch: My Lolo Marciano's Paper Trail — Ligao, Albay to Honolulu to Vallejo
Found on FamilySearch: My Lolo Marciano's Paper Trail — Ligao, Albay to Honolulu to Vallejo
Three U.S. government records place my grandfather in Ligao, Albay in 1909, arriving in Honolulu in 1981, and gone in Vallejo by 1992 — independently confirming the same parents his younger brother Emiliano's 1912 baptismal record already named.
I already knew the outline of my grandfather's life: born in Ligao, Albay in 1909, gone in Vallejo in January 1992. What I never had was the one date in between — when he actually crossed over. This week, three separate U.S. government records filled that gap, and confirmed everything else I thought I knew along the way.
Marciano Perseveranda landed in Honolulu, Hawaii on February 24, 1981. I was in eighth grade. The date lines up with a memory I've carried for years without ever being able to pin it down precisely — and it turns out the paper trail was sitting in three different federal and state indexes the whole time, waiting to be searched under the right name.
For most of the twentieth century, the U.S. Navy was one of the very few doors open to Filipino men seeking a path to American residency — first as messmen and stewards under agreements dating back to the colonial period, then formalized and expanded after the 1947 Military Bases Agreement. Once a son earned citizenship through Navy service, family petition became the bridge for everyone left behind. That's very likely the door Marciano walked through in 1981.
Utang na loob OO-tang nah loh-OB
Meaning: A debt of the inner self — the deep, reciprocal obligation that binds a Filipino family together. It's the same current that moves a son to petition for the father who raised him.
The Paper Trail
None of these three records has an attached photograph — they're index entries, not scanned documents — but together they hold up cleanly. Here's what each one shows:
| Source | Date | What It Shows |
|---|---|---|
| All three records agree | Jan 2, 1909 | Born in the Philippines — Ligao, Albay specifically, per the Numident record |
| Index to Alien Case Files | Feb 24, 1981 | Arrived in the U.S. at Honolulu, Hawaii (Registration No. 37492888) |
| Social Security Numident | Aug 21, 1981 | Applied for a Social Security number, residence listed as Vallejo, Solano, California |
| California Death Index | Jan 27, 1992 | Died in Solano County, California |
The six months between the Honolulu arrival and the Social Security application are exactly what you'd expect from the paperwork lag of the era — land, settle, then get processed into the system. Nothing here contradicts anything else; if anything, this is an unusually clean paper trail for a man born in a Philippine parish in 1909.
A note on the misspelling
I ran this search twice — once as "Marciano Perseveranda," and once, on a hunch, as the common typo "Marciano Perceveranda." Both searches returned the same three records. FamilySearch's indexing is forgiving enough on a surname this unusual that a transposed letter didn't cost me anything. Worth remembering for anyone else chasing a name that gets misspelled as often as this one does.
Ligao, Albay to Honolulu, Hawaii
The records don't explain why 1981, or why Honolulu specifically. Family history does: Marciano's son Manuel — Tito Maning to the rest of us — enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1975. Six years later, it was Manuel's petition that brought his father across. That detail comes from family record, not yet from a document in hand; if a petition file or naturalization record surfaces, it belongs in an update here.
Manuel's path was a well-worn one, and Marciano's arrival at Honolulu — a historic U.S. Navy port — fits the pattern exactly. Filipino enlistment in the Navy long predates 1975, but a Navy career was, for decades, one of the most reliable roads to American citizenship available to a Filipino man, and citizenship was what made petitioning for a parent possible at all.
A Second Source for Juan and Valeriana
The Numident record names Marciano's parents in full: Juan Perseveranda and Valeriana R. Presenta. The Alien Case File index gives their first names alone — Juan, Valeriana — but they match. Both match, exactly, the parents named in his younger brother Emiliano's 1912 Ligao, Albay baptismal record. That's a federal immigration record and a Catholic parish register, generated roughly seventy years apart by two governments that never spoke to each other, agreeing on the same two names. That's about as solid as this kind of cross-source corroboration gets.
It's also worth noting how Marciano's own name appears in the federal indexes: "Marciano Presenta Perseveranda" — his mother's maiden surname carried as a middle name, standard Filipino naming practice, and itself a small, built-in confirmation of who Valeriana was.
The Family's First Photographer
There's a coda to this search that has nothing to do with FamilySearch. Marciano was the first photographer in the Perseveranda family — the man who owned a camera before anyone else did, and used it. I have boxes of his negatives and prints: some from Ligao and Marikina life before any of us left, and more still from the years he was here, 1981 through 1992, shot on his own camera and on ones my father, my sister, and I pointed back at him. The photo above is one of those — Thanksgiving in Vallejo, November 28, 1985, Melvin, me, Lolo Marciano, Joy, and Kristine around the table. I was home on break from my freshman year at UC Davis.
That habit skipped my father's generation entirely and landed on me. I can say that Lolo's photography and photos made an impact on me as a kid, and that's why I've carried the tradition. Some of that archive is already backdated into this site's photo essays. A lot more of it is still in the scanning queue — and it's coming.
- FamilySearch: California, Death Index, 1940–1997 — Marciano Presenta Perseveranda, 27 Jan 1992
- FamilySearch: United States, Social Security Numerical Identification Files (NUMIDENT), 1936–2007 — Marciano P Perseveranda
- FamilySearch: United States, Index to Alien Case Files, 1940–2003 — Marciano Perseveranda, 24 Feb 1981
- PinoyBuilt: Found on FamilySearch — My Granduncle's 1912 Baptism, Emiliano Perseveranda
- PinoyBuilt: Found on FamilySearch — Lola Rosa's 1914 Baptismal Record From Oas, Albay
- PinoyBuilt: Perseveranda Family — February 1992
- PinoyBuilt: Perseveranda Family After St. Catherine of Siena Mass, 1992
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
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