u/numismagus

Went down a rabbit hole searching for my ancestors through my great-grandfather, Mamerto Paglinawan, who was a writer and advocate for Tagalog in the early 20th century. Big thanks to the Latter Day Saints for their site familysearch.org which maintains records from the 1800s. These photos hopefully show a snapshot of the community at that time.

Photo 1: First page of the parish census of San Miguel now commonly referred to as Malacañang Church. “Estado de Almas de este pubelo de San Miguel Año de 1862” i.e. State of the souls of the town of San Miguel Year of 1862 followed by table of contents of family names.

Photo 2: At the end of the record is a summary of the census from a bit earlier in 1858:

Souls of the Parish of the town of San Miguel, province of Manila, corresponding to the year 1858.

Native tax-paying persons: 1,975
Tax-paying Sangley mestizos: 44
Persons exempted by privilege: 140
Persons exempted by age: 117
Of confession and communion: 268
Of confession: 726
Of young children of both sexes: 514
Spaniards: 12
Spanish mestizos: 86
Christian Chinese: 0
Christian baptized infidels: 1
Total sum: 3,820

Photo 3: The barangay where my ancestors were attached to: Barangay No. 17 of Don Zacharias Villamairin

Photo 4: My ancestors’ names (couple and 2 children). The couple are the grandparents of my great-grandfather, Mamerto Paglinawan.

Personal notes: I had some inkling about the role the Church played in maintaining population records. However the 1860s was ‘modern’ times already and the decade when Rizal, Bonifacio, and Aguinaldo were born. Parish records were still the standard for checking who lived where; who paid taxes to whom; and which ethnic classification they belonged to (indio, mestizo sangley, mestizo español, full español, and even infieles)

Recently there was a thread speculating about the trajectory of Islam in the Philippine Archipelago had there been no Spanish intervention. It brought to mind the curious story of Datuk Manila whose tomb and shrine is in Malacca, Malaysia. Locals believe him to be a 16th-century Islamic scholar who, together with other believers, left Manila due to Spanish persecution in the years after its conquest. As the memorial plaque reads, he was well-regarded by the Malaccans as a wise and virtuous teacher. The Malaysian government made his grave into a historical site in 1977.

'Datuk Manila' is almost certainly an epithet, not his original name. But it's interesting that after 300 years of Islamic missionary work in the Philippines - often pioneered by Arabs and Malays - it had produced a homegrown luminary from the frontier of Luzon no less. Folk tradition says that Datuk Manila's shrine has been the site for miracles. People still leave food offerings in the hopes that he will intercede for them; an interesting parallel with Filipino folk Catholic practices.

Although buried in Malaysia, he and those who travelled with him, are part of Manila's and the Philippines' history. When we think of Islam in the Philippines, our thoughts wander south to Sulu and Mindanao. Yet Datuk Manila's career (if we can call it that) together with that of others who exist in snippets from Spanish records - Tagalog merchants who read and wrote in Arabic; panditas (wise men) spreading the faith in Batangas; leaders like Raja Sulayman and Magat Salamat with Islamic names - show a thread that once stretched the entire archipelago.

Image sources: www.malayasia-traveller.com, FB: Sementeryo: Heritage Cemeteries of the Philippines