Wu Cheng Zeng Genealogy (武城曾氏重修族譜）

[kjhong]

I am posting my family Zupu in this forum. I'm hopeful that I can gain some insight about my family history from the members of this forum. I have digitized my pedigree on Geni.com from my father to Zēng Jiù 曾舊, 103, 91, 38, 34世 , and with the help of work already done by Yao Liu and Dr. Philip Tan, I was able to connect my work upward to Zēng Shēn 曾參, 70, 58, 5, 1世 and Huáng Dì, 黄帝, Jī Xuān Yuán 姬軒轅, 1世 and down to distant cousins like Zēng Guó Fān 曾國藩.

I have limited experience speaking, reading, and writing Chinese (Kindergarten at best), but I have gotten quite far with my rudimentary skills, a touch pad, Google Translate, Wikipedia, and the MDBG Chinese-English dictionary.

Zupu's

• This Zupu was handwritten by my grandfather before leaving China for the United States in 1915, it is titled "武城曾氏重修族譜"
  www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000026606926371
  
• I found an identically titled 5 volume Zupu on FamilySearch.com that matches my grandfather's zupu from generations 1-41 which has more details including portraits of our ancestors:
  familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1971-27453-34314-49?cc=1787988&wc=9JG3-T3V:1021938901,1021934502,1021944401,1022070601,1022497401
  
  Zeng Shen's entry begins on page 277.
  

I'm interested in deciphering more biographical details beyond names and dates that are contained in these documents, such as:
- How my family migrated from Shandong to Guangdong,
- Where new branches of the family started - another zupu lists Zēng Zi Róng 曾子榮, 123, 111, 58, 54, 1世 as the progenitor of a new branch,
- The name and location of our ancestral village - my grandfather (曾學厚) was from the Dong An Village, Toishan County, Guangdong (廣東台山東安村)
- I'm not even sure what else is in the Zupu but there seems to be more than just names and dates for many entries

I've seen the great work that Dr. Philip Tan has done for Yuminnan's branch of the Zeng family, and am hopeful that we can uncover more together.

[philiptancl]

Hi Kjhong,

Welcome to the Forum and in sending me messages initially through Geni and subsequently through emails.

In following your pedigree line of your ancestry upward as contained in Geni, I can see that what you had already established it therein. As such you would be the envy of most, if not all, members from this Forum to establish your ancestries so easily. In addition to having your pedigree chart drawn up from Huang Di down to till Zēng Jiù 曾舊, 103, 91, 38, 34世, what additional continuation of the chart from Zēng Jiù 曾舊 down to you could easily be completed with the information you already have and digitized into Geni. This part of the chart would run parallel with that of Yuminnan's branch of Zeng (曾) family tree. From what I could figure out your branch is one that went down to Guangdong and would not be from the Longshan (龍山) Zeng (曾) branch because the start of Longshan branch is two generations after and the primogenitor is Zēng Yán Zuò (曾延祚)/Yán Shì (延世), 105, 93, 40, 36, 1世. To establish the migration routes of your ancestry from Shandong to Guangdong, you would need to study commentary/biography written for each profile as contained in the Zupu handwritten by your grandfather and if it had been copied without them, then it is to seek out the related profiles as contained the 5 volume identical Zupu provided by FamilySearch.com. I did quickly glance at a page containing some profiles and I can see they do contain biographical details and commentaries.

I do not even have Kindergarten level of knowledge in Chinese let alone any ability in reading and writing Chinese, I would be of no help in reading biographical details and commentaries. What I could do is only in extracting the name(s) from each profile, it's siblings, the dates of birth and death and how each profile at one generation is connected to that before and after in order to create a pedigree chart for someone. These areas are not what you are after.

Drawing up the branches within other surname trees would only be a meaningful objective to me if it is done for someone specifically. As for the Zeng (曾) clan, I now have two persons here for whom I am trying to convince in seeking out their ancestral villages in China with the hope of sourcing their respective Zupu/Jiapu. One is a Hakka from Guangdong while the other is from Nan'an County in Fujian. It would be interesting to see how their ancestral lines would be connected to yours and that of Yuminnan.

From our exchanges of emails, you mother's Chin/Chen (陳) clan can now be connected to Chen Hui (Chen Fengtai). You are very fortunate that both your parents have the foresight to obtain copies of their respective zupu/jiapu for posterity. Your ancestries for both sides of your parents can easily be drawn up and to have them connected all the way to Huang Di. As you already have at least an elementary knowledge of reading and writing Chinese, it could your target now to master the Chinese language enough for you could interpret the biographical details/commentaries contained in your Zupus

I would suggest that you capture the images of your ancestors contained in Zupu provided by FamilySearch.com and clean up the images extracted. If you intend to construct the pedigree chart after Zēng Jiù 曾舊, you can attach these images there on and use them in Geni.

Philip

[liuyao]

Hi kjhong,

Nice to see you here too. If you have specific passages, I can help deciphering (If you and Philip are kindergarten level, I'm no better than elementary school). I browsed through your grandfather's hand copy of zupu (very good handwriting by the way), and it seems that the 40th generation 中美 is the one that migrated to Guangdong, and it was the beginning of Song dynasty (More specifically, it was in the four years of the reigning era 建隆, AD 960-963).

[kjhong]

Liu Yao,
Good to see you here, too. I'll take a closer look at the entry for 曾中美.

Cheers,
Ken

[kjhong]

Aug 31, 2014 22:16:26 GMT -7 laohuaqiao said:

kjhong,
Is this your paternal grandfather Tsang/Zeng who settled in Burma/Myanmar?

I have a friend, a Tsang/Zeng from Taishan and I'm pretty sure it's Doushan Shangge 斗山上阁, whose grandparents separately went to Burma around/during WWII and were married there. Her parents later came to the US and she's in New York now. I'm wondering if you know of other Tsangs/Zengs from Burma. I'll try to find out if she knows the name of her ancestral village.

From: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/thread/2037/henry-morse-siu?page=2&scrollTo=14933#ixzz3C2kzB49y

It was my paternal grandfather (Zeng) who settled in Burma. His name was Tsang Hock How in Cantonese (曾學厚, Zeng Xuehou). They were in Rangoon for maybe 8 or so years. My dad,  uncles, aunts and grandmother were sent to the US between 1947 and 1954. After that my grandfather maintained his business in Burma for a time. But as things got dicey there he moved to Hong Kong then shifted his business to Thailand and other areas in SE Asia.

I always think of my grandfather's generation of immigrants to the US as being very tragic, especially the college educated ones. Born under a Qing Emperor. Seeing the birth of the Republic of China in their teens, then filled with hopes and dreams as they received their western education.  Only to face depression, war, and civil war/revolution in the prime of their lives.

In my grandfather's case, he faced revolution in more than one country. He was in his 60's and probably ready to retire, when his business in Burma was nationalized. In the 1970's he once wrote to me that he enjoyed frequent trips to Macau. I wonder if it was because Macau was the closest he could get to his ancestral village, which was 50 miles away.

(Of course, this is no more tragic than most of Chinese history in the 20th century.)