Ma, Mar, Mah surname

[kaliman1960]

I have looked through most of these entries, I do not see any for Ma, Mar, or Mah. I see Some entries for Wong. I'm the only Wong in my family because of papers. Does anyone have maps or other information regarding the Ma surname?

[lachinatown]

Have you look at the village database? which shows a lot of villages in Taishan.

www.c-c-c.org/villagedb/search.cgi and at chinese.rootswiki.legacy1.net/doku.php?id=references:villages:village_database:ma

And if you have Chinese characters, your village can be easily located.

[kaliman1960]

Where can I find the map the DB refers

[Henry]

Hi Kaliman1960,

Welcome to our Forum !

The Village Database has never had copies of the 4 maps that came with the original published books. I had some friends in the Library of Congress and they scanned these maps for me. I offered these maps to the Village Database Administrator several times with no response. So I posted them on my website and referred people to these maps when they needed to find a village.

Unfortunately, the creators of these maps were not cartographers or geographers and made mistakes in setting up the maps - sometimes even though you had access to the maps, people were unable to locate there villages. As I am a geographer by profession, I just go ahead and locate the village and provide the information to the researchers.

By the way, you have several people on the Forum that are quite good at locating ancestral villages. One of these days, when I have some time, I will write a procedure for how to locate ancestral villages in the SiYi region and post it for comment on the Forum and then refine it and let it become an open document that can be used to locate ancestral villages in the SiYi region or even extended to other parts of China.

I believe this would be a worthy collective effort by Forum members.

But, for now - please contact me on " [e-mail]" and I will send you a digital version of the Village Database map that you need.

I usually pay more attention to inquiries on the Forum, however, I recently moved from Frederick, MD to Goodyear, AZ - about 12 miles west of Phoenix and became the President of the gun club in our community and in 6 months our membership has grown to almost 100 men & women and I am very active managing the club activities and also shooting - and have been rather busy shooting rifle, pistols, shotguns ( trap, skeet, sporting clays ), hunting & fishing and then also reloading all the ammo for these shooting activities.

Henry

[kaliman1960]

Henry,

I think I may have spoken to you years ago around 2005/06. At that time, I was planning to visit China and try to find the village. In fact, I did make the trip and did find the village. Since my family was part of a tour group, we were able to break away for a little while and only visited the village for about 20 minutes. It was a awesome visit to finally see the house my grandfather built from the stories I heard from childhood. I believe you did send me some maps, but I do not have them any more.

Since my trip in 2006, I found the book "The First of Many" by Julian MarDock regarding his father Sam MarDock. Sam MarDock is my Grandfather's Uncle that brought my grandfather over to the U.S. in 1912. My grandfather is mentioned in the book. Interesting enough, the book has a family tree and pictures of the house that Sam MarDock built for his bride. I wished I knew then what I know now, and I would have traveled just a hundred yard further to see Sam's house. The people living in my grandfather's house are later generations of family from Sam's adopted son.

In addition, I have obtained a copy of the family book from my uncle who copied it years ago from the village book, but just in the past 4-5 years made available to me. The hard part is finding someone to translate it to pinyin so that future generations that cannot read Chinese can enjoy it. Recently, my pastor whose surname is Wong revealed that his village is near Baisha as well. I'm trying to locate his village to see what is the proximity to my grandfather's village. He said his village is 青山 across the river from Baisha. I know that the Ma and Wong's were very close and that both clans cross married. My last name is a result of papers long ago. Of course, from the database, there are many Wong villages as there are many Ma villages. Anyways, my pastor wants to see the family book and that he may be able to translate it for me.

I have hopes to make another visit, but since I do not speak Mandarin or read Chinese, my wife is afraid that I may get taken advantage by the local people. Thanks to the information you provided on the Toishanwah by that professor, I'm remembering many of the Toishan words that I have forgotten and the defense language institute book has helped. My wife runs a small assisted living group home that caters to Chinese in Gaithersburg, MD. Surprisingly enough, 2/3 of the residents are Toishan, and one of my wife's employee speaks Toishan. So, I'm getting back to my roots. My journey to find the village has had many practical applications.

Many thanks to everyone here on the forum for helping those of us conducting our family searches.

My email address is [e-mail].

Larry Wong
黃鼎洲

[Henry]

Hi Larry,

Please forgive me, as I have helped so many people locating ancestral villages, it is difficult for me to remember everyone. I did go back and checked and found your emails to me in 2006.

I looked and created a map of the ancestral village of Pastor Wong, which I will email to your email address.

I hope this helps.

Henry