Newbie seek grandfather in JyaPu?

[jplouie]

Please see the image here
drive.google.com/file/d/0B0Ub2CwwW-THc1ZiaVlwZmw5UlU/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-Jf-JAvJGTevT5-crCF40fQ

My grandfather's headstone image is above (and for convenience is in the link in this sentence too). He's buried in NYCity where I was born and grew up. I'd like to find his registration if possible in the village record JyaPu or JyutPoh. His second character after Louie is 成 (Sen, or Hsing).

And this is where Google Maps says he's from ShuiChaoNanCun

As you can see, grandfather was from: Guangdong, TaiShan, Jiangmen, TongMin, AiGong, SueyChaoNan Village. His proper name in <'hoy saan wah> in romanized characters sounds like Louie Hsing-Ch'iew. I don't know if Lee Louie is his married name or a paper name. NARA immigration says Lee Louie was born in the USA in San Francisco 1894 which I doubt due to Exclusion and the fire at the Hall of Records, but perhaps. Any help appreciated. BTW, my father and his 3 brothers were born after 1910, (grandfathered-in as American citizens so to speak) in the same ancestral village, and they all have the second character name 晋 my own father had as his third character 鐸. My father said his name was pronounce Dung Ock, his brothers Dung Yim and Dung Him, but I'm not sure that's what the characters would be pronounced. Here is a link to a version of the Louie family geneology poem provided by a member of the FB group Louie Fong Kwong Clan. 

I have almost nil Chinese, although I did study it in college almost 50 years ago so I'm not totally ignorant of Chinese language concepts.

All and any help appreciated. Thank you for letting me join this group.

[gckimm]

Hi jplouie:

You are on the right track. Your grandfather's village, in Cantonese, Sui Chiu Nam in Tong Min Township (Heung) 塘面鄉水潮南村 is listed in the Village Database: villagedb.friendsofroots.org/display.cgi/village/3282. However, based on my Google searching, it looks like Tong Min became Sek Kiu Administrative District, Chung Gan Village in the town of Dai Gong 大江真石橋管區中間村. Sui Chiu Nam may no longer exist as a separate entity. Tong Min was definitely a major location for Louie clan families; a Louie ancestor by the name of Fook 復 was the first to move there in 1273.

I also found references to two genealogies that may be pertinent to your search. The first is on a Google Books webpage and it appears to be a genealogy of the Louie clan in Toishan/Taishan from 2010. To find the page, Google 台山雷氏族譜 ; I can't copy and paste the link here because part of the address is in Chinese. However, there is no e-book available, nor is there any information about how to obtain the book somewhere else.

The second reference comes from a question and answer posted on the Chinese website Baidu. It is here: zhidao.baidu.com/question/81484685.html. Translation: (Question) "May I ask, is there a genealogy for the Louie clan of Dai Gong Town, Toishan? If there is, please tell me. Thanks!" (Answer) "There is. It is at the Louie clan ancestral temple near Chung Seh Village, Sek Kiu Administrative District, Dai Gong Town, Toishan." Note that this village is Chung Seh 中社村, not Chung Gan, but it must be a neighbor.

You are lucky to have the full name of your grandfather's village. But unless you can find someone outside of China who has a copy of your grandfather's genealogy, it looks like you will have to travel to China or have someone there obtain a genealogy for you. If you can afford the services of the company My China Roots, you could hire the staff to research your lineage and perhaps find the right genealogy.

Good luck!

Greg

[robert123]

Hi jplouie, I remember seeing your post in the Louie Fong Kwong Clan FB group site. It seems that you have seen the 2010 Louie clan zupu that Greg refers to. You commented that the village name in the header was missing a character. Based on the various maps it appears that the first character was in the original village name has been dropped from the current name.

The Google Map location that you posted in FB is the correct location for your grandfather's village. In terms of your comment on FB that it looks like it has "gone to factories and housing projects", I suspect that you clicked on the satellite imagery in Google Maps. Be aware that because of legislation in China there is an offset between the satellite imagery and the map. So the satellite imagery you saw may not reflect the actual location on the map. Use this Google Map link to see what the village looks like - ignore the text on the image. It should look like this image.
 

In terms of the generation poem, the one posted in the FB group by Carole is the one used in the old Tong Min township. My grandfather was from the same township in a village less than a mile up the road from your grandfather's. The Chinese naming practice in the area has been to have a birth name and then a registered clan generation name at marriage. Many people have not bothered with obtaining a clan generation name especially those who have immigrated to North America where governments expect your name to stay the same. With paper names, the romanized name may have a different surname but a person does not change their Chinese name so I suspect the marker inscription in Chinese is his given name (at birth). If you did not find your grandfather's name in the 2010 zupu in the pages with the village name then the records may have been destroyed or have not been transcribed. This was the case with my grandfather. If you visit the village and speak with the village chief, he may remember your grandfather and point out where his house was. If it is still there, there might be some inscriptions on the ancestral altar that may help.