Found: Lolo Marciano’s 1909 Baptismal Record, Hidden by a Misspelled Surname
Found: Lolo Marciano’s 1909 Baptismal Record, Hidden by a Misspelled Surname
A FamilySearch computer misread the Perseveranda name. A search for his lola Francisca found him anyway, right after I watched a movie about forgetting.
On 10/6, I watched Forgotten Island. The lost island in that film is called Nakali, short for Nakalimutan, and it wipes the memories of the people who visit it. I have written about how the film treats family, friendship, and memory in my Forgotten Island coverage. I did not expect the film to follow me home.
After the movie, I went back to look for Lolo Marciano’s baptismal record. I had tried before and never found it. The reason is simple and a little maddening: the FamilySearch computer index read his handwritten surname as Pererverana, not Perseveranda, so every search under the right spelling came up empty. I only found his record when I searched for Francisca, his lola. Her name led me to him.
FamilySearch flagged this record as “indexed by a computer” and invites users to correct records with its Edit button. If your ancestor will not turn up under his own name, search for a parent, a grandparent, or a sibling. The record may be there under a name the machine misread.
Ninuno nee-NOO-noh
Meaning: Ancestors; forebears.
Francisca, Juan, Valeriana, Andrea, and Mariano are my ninuno, and my children’s. A computer hid them for a while.
What FamilySearch Shows
The index entry for the record reads as follows, next to what our family has always known.
| Detail | Our family | FamilySearch index |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Marciano Perseveranda | Marciano Pererverana |
| Birth date | 1/2/1909 | 1/5/1909 |
| Christening | — | 1/6/1909 |
| Place | Ligao, Albay | Ligao, Albay, Filipinas |
| Parents | Juan and Valeriana Presenta | Match |
The parents match, and that is how I know this is Lolo. The surname does not, and neither does the birth date. I have since corrected the surname in the FamilySearch index so the next Perseveranda who searches finds him on the first try. You can see the original image of the page yourself.
Who Is on This Page
The handwritten entry is in Spanish and opens with the date, the sixth of January, 1909. It records a baptism at the parish church of San Esteban Protomártir in Ligao, Albay. What I love about it is how many relatives it names. As I read it, the entry gives:
- His parents, Juan and Valeriana Presenta, both natives of Ligao.
- His paternal grandmother, Francisca Perseveranda, the lola who led me to him.
- His maternal grandparents, Mariano and Andrea Rolda.
The entry also names a godfather and the priest who performed the baptism. I have left those names out because I cannot yet read them with confidence. This is my reading of a century-old hand, not a certified transcription, and I would rather leave a gap than print a guess.
For Veronica, Chesca, and JianCarlo, this is the page that puts your great-grandfather in the middle of the family he came from: a mother, a father, and a grandmother on each side.
The Date That Does Not Match
Our family has always celebrated Lolo’s birthday on 1/2/1909. The FamilySearch index says he was born 1/5/1909. Both dates fall before the baptism on 1/6, so the christening date alone cannot choose between them.
The entry itself can. This entry states the child’s age in days, and that number is the tiebreaker. In the image I downloaded, the binding runs through that line and swallows the end of the word. I am not going to guess. The index entry was made by a computer, and I have already seen what a computer does with this handwriting.
Until I can read it, 1/2 stays Lolo’s birthday in our family. If you read Spanish parish handwriting from the early 1900s and can look at the original image, please tell me what you see in the comments.
Lolo, the Photographer
Lolo Marciano was born and raised in Ligao, Albay. Lola Rosita Camposano Perseveranda, his wife, was from Oas, in the same province, and I wrote about her 1914 baptismal record from Oas in June. In Marikina, the two of them lived on our street.
Lolo took the photographs of my sister Joy and me growing up in Marikina. He also photographed his own children growing up in Santa Cruz, Manila, among them my father Ronald and my Tita Gigi, Tita Nene, and Tita Lila. I have said before that my Lolo’s photos helped me remember childhood moments, which were everything to me. They are the reason I picked up a camera.
On 8/19/1976, Lola Rosita, Joy, and I left the Philippines. I was nine. Joy and I promised each other we would never forget our Tagalog. Nakali, the island in the movie, is what that kind of forgetting looks like when you give it a shoreline.
A Name Is Easier to Lose Than You Think
A computer misread one handwritten surname and a baptismal record sat out of reach. Nothing about the record changed. It was always in Ligao, always in the register, always waiting for someone to search for the right grandmother. The Bikol roots of Ligao and Oas run through this family, and I have written about the Bikol word that named a volcano and about what our AncestryDNA results say about Filipino history.
This record adds one more thing to that archive: Lolo Marciano’s name, spelled the way his family spells it, on a page from 1909. If you are searching for your own ninuno, search for the lola.
- FamilySearch: Marciano Perseveranda, Christening, Ligao, Albay, January 6, 1909 (index record)
- FamilySearch: original image of the Ligao parish register page
- JoBlo: Forgotten Island Review (the island of Nakali and its erased memories)
- Wikipedia: Forgotten Island (release, cast, plot)
- Family records and recollections of J.F.R. Perseveranda
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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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