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Feb 1, 2007 4:37:03 GMT -5
Post by chavezfromchan on Feb 1, 2007 4:37:03 GMT -5
I don't know if this is what the site is for as I am new.
I am looking to trace my heritage or as much as I can as far back as I can.
My last name is Chavez, My greatgrandfather was Gene Chan, he was from Canton China. In the early 1900's he left and came to america. A few years later he moved to mexico city where he lived for another few years before finally settling in El Salvador where he married a Salvadorian woman whose name I cannot remember. After living in latin America He decided to change/translate his last name from Chan to Chavez hence my last name.
His oldest son (My grandfather) was Miguel Angel Chavez, there were several of them one of his siblings was Raul Chavez.
My grandfather married twice. The first set of kids was Miguel Chavez II, Chepe Chavez, Carlos Chavez, (And a female whose name I cannot recall).
Miguel Married my grandmother Nelly Molina. He came to the states in the 1960's. Then followed my mother who came to the states just before I was born in 1980, (She never married my father which is why I still have the name Chavez) anyways I asked my grandmother about my greatgrandfather and she said he didn't have much contact with his family after leaving China. Apparently he told her that most of them died in some sort of flood that happens there every few seasons. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Feb 1, 2007 11:57:42 GMT -5
Post by Woodson on Feb 1, 2007 11:57:42 GMT -5
I'm afraid you don't have enough information to work with. Your ggf may have used Canton as reference to the entire Guangdong province not the city Guangzhou. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuangzhouThe surname isn't much of help because Chan is the most common surname in Guangdong province.
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Feb 1, 2007 17:35:21 GMT -5
Post by Henry on Feb 1, 2007 17:35:21 GMT -5
Hi,
Welcome !
Ask your grandmother if she has any documents in Chinese that might identify your great grandfather's surname and his village in China. Names and addresses on mail envelopes. If you can obtain a photo of your ggf's gravestone - it probably has all of this in Chinese - then post it here and there may be some colleagues that will translate the Chinese and we can establish some facts regarding your heritage.
Henry
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Feb 23, 2007 14:42:41 GMT -5
Post by helen on Feb 23, 2007 14:42:41 GMT -5
casefiles.berkeley.edu/ Found this great website - Hundreds of thousands of people passed through the immigration stations in San Francisco and Honolulu between 1882 and 1955. Nearly 250,000 of them are the subject of federal reports and records , including immigration investigation case files of people who tried to immigrate--some successfully, some not--during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1943. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Pacific Region, in San Bruno, California houses these records and others. The public can view these records at the San Bruno branch. This website can help you find out what cases are available at the NARA archives. If you would like to see whether information is available for a particular individual, do a search here to get the case file number. You won't find the actual, physical case files on this website; you will have to travel to the NARA office in San Bruno to see the records themselves. On this website you can find out: whether NARA has a case file for a particular person, the case file number, and a bit of information about that person. For more complete information, you will need to actually examine a case file; having the case file number will make it easy for a NARA archivist to retrieve the file for you.
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