How to Trace Your Ancestors: A Step-By-Step Guide | by Miko Santos
The most popular websites are ancestry.com, familysearch.org, and myheritage.com. When adding a member to your tree, be as detailed as possible.
scholars
Do not be afraid to send cold emails and Facebook message requests to strangers. I have done this myself. I reached out to all sorts of people ranging from <anchor>scholars</anchor> (whose research intersected with the life of my great-great-grandparent) to distant relatives (who might remember names that my parents and grandparents cannot). I followed Facebook pages like Historic San Mateo and joined Facebook groups like Manila Nostalgia where people share old photos and stories. Maybe you can even talk to the oldest living person in your barangay?
How I Met My Great-Great-Grandfather (Lolo ng Lola ko): An Investigative Journey | by Miko Santos | Medium
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# How I Met My Great-Great-Grandfather (Lolo ng Lola ko): An Investigative Journey

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15 min read

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Mar 1, 2021

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One thing I was surprised to find myself doing in the midst of the pandemic was tracing back my ancestors. Who were they? Where did they live? What did they do? How did they think? What were their dreams, fears, and struggles? How did they die, and at what age? Which of the historical figures I know today did my ancestors live alongside with? Maybe even interacted with? These were the questions running through my mind as I struggled to find clues to trace my roots.

Obviously, I did notactually meet my great-great-grandfather in person simply because he lived his life a century ago. However, it certainly did feel like I had met him because of how detailed all the information about him that I was able to uncover.

Most of my recent ancestors¹ were farmers, but in this piece, I will focus on the story of a great-great-grandfather who brought one of the first forms of mass-audience entertainment, “ bodabil” (vaudeville), to the Philippine audience 100 years ago during the “Jazz Age”. Out of my 16 great-great-grandparents, it turned out that he has the most well-documented life. Most records were buried in the dusty depths of Philippine history, so I took it upon myself to do the digging.

This is the untold story of Domingo Reantaso, a teacher-turned-actor, comedian, singer, playwright, boxing announcer & matchmaker, then in his later years, became a sports league official, a social welfare activist, a workers’ union leader, and a war veteran. Whew, that was plenty of hats to wear! You can imagine my surprise each time I discovered one job after another. Now let us take a giant step back first as I bring you along with me on this wild ride called ancestry research and show you the twists, turns, and dead ends that came with it.

Oas (Wikipedia)

Jose Espineli “Joonee” Gamboa (TMDB)

## A scavenger hunt

When I began this journey, I barely realized that it would involve grueling detective work. All I had with me were these four pieces of information about my Lolo:

1. His name: Domingo Reantaso
2. His nickname: “Xandy” /san-di/
3. His birthplace: Oas, Albay ²
4. His occupation: a theatrical stage director in Manila who have worked with Joonee Gamboa and a certain “Patsy”

That’s all. We had no photos of him nor any other detail about his life apart from his job. Lolo “Xandy” is my grandmother’s grandfather after all. I was just thankful she remembered this much. I rolled up my sleeves and went to the genealogical website ancestry.com. I started building our family tree up to three generations, then four generations back.³

I began my research using the tools on the website that allowed me to look for birth, marriage, and death records of a deceased person. I typed “Domingo Reantaso” and clicked the Search button. No results. No birth, marriage, or death records were available. I scrolled down. What I did not expect to discover was a travel record in 1927 from Manila to Honolulu, Hawaii:

Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii, 1900–1959; National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.

Domingo Reantaso’s boarding pass. Source: Index to Filipino Passengers Arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii, 1900–1952

Three things stood out. His name and birthplace matched, then there was the note in the last column: “Savoy Theatre”. Bingo! This was consistent with what I currently knew — his job as a stage director. My grandmother and her siblings didn’t even know Lolo Xandy went to Hawaii! This was news to them.

So now I have learned these additional details about him: his birthdate, his affiliation to Savoy Theatre, and that in 1927, he sailed for 11 days to Honolulu. One question popped up: Why is he on a list of US citizens? Hours passed by, and it seemed like I had already reached a dead end in my digital scavenger hunt. I could not find any more documents mentioning “ Domingo Reantaso” so I closed my laptop and moved on with my life.

## Surprise, surprise

A few weeks later, I got curious again and decided to dig deeper. Checking one birth record after another, anyone with a name that vaguely resembles my Lolo’s. Then I came across a death record of a certain “ Sunday Reantaso” and, quite conveniently, with the actual photo of his tombstone:

This made me curious. “Sunday” had the same month and day of birth as Lolo Xandy, but not the exact year.⁴ He died in Honolulu, the city where my great-great-grandfather traveled to 21 years prior to this man’s date of death. It could be a weird coincidence, I thought, so I kept going.

A few hours and hundreds of mouse clicks later, I found another document belonging to “Sunday”. This time, a military registration card on Valentine’s Day of 1942, two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor:

U.S. WWII Draft Cards Young Men, 1940–1947; The National Archives in St. Louis, Missouri

He was also born in Oas, Albay! Now, this raised my internal alarms. This was probably more than a mere coincidence. A new question arose: Who is this Lucy Reantaso listed as his wife? That’s not the name of my great-great-grandmother.

I inspected each piece of information on the card and proceeded to Google what USO is, Sunday’s employer:

This could be an employer that he would work for, given his theatrical experience. Wait a minute. Sunday… Xandy… San-di… Could it be? I did not want my excitement to cloud my judgment, so I looked for additional proof. And proofs I got:

“Filipino History in Hawaii before 1946: The Sakada Years of Filipinos in Hawaii”

The bombardment of new information that followed was overwhelming, to say the least. It turned out that his 1927 Hawaii trip was not the first time he set foot in America. As a young boy, he was sent to study at a Catholic school in Manhattan, New York, at a time when the Philippines was still a US colony. Is my Lolo one of the pensionados that I have heard about in my history classes? I was not able to confirm this myself.

After returning to his home country, he studied and taught at the then-newly-formed University of the Philippines. (We are schoolmates!)

## More than what I was looking for

I asked my grandmother where they got the nickname “Xandy” and its modern-looking spelling. It seemed like they only vaguely heard the name from their father as kids and then decided that it was probably spelled that way. That explains it! True enough, Sunday is simply the anglicized name of Domingo (Americanized from Spanish).⁵

With this vital piece of information — knowing that he was also called “Sunday”, a plethora of new doors were opened in my little research about his life. Google search results that were once scant were now brimming with old articles mentioning his name in newspapers, blogs, and even academic papers.

Some image clippings about Sunday Reantaso. Source

In 1916, he started the first Filipino vaudeville company, the Philippine Vaudeville Stars. Remember, this was in an era before home televisions and movies with sounds.⁶

Before going to Savoy Theater, Sunday Reantaso’s vaudeville shows were performed here in Lux Theater (beside Rivoli Theater) which he himself managed in 1923. In case you missed it, that’s his face right there in the newspaper ad.

The vaudeville was the most popular form of live entertainment at the time, a theatrical variety show where the likes of Dolphy and Nora Aunor began their show business careers. It could be argued that the influence of vaudeville on Filipino culture persists to this day, as manifested by our fascination with noontime variety television shows like Eat Bulaga! and It’s Showtime!.⁷

Days turned into weeks, then into months, as I continued to sift through digital archives of newspapers and articles mentioning my great-great-grandfather’s name. I even sent cold emails to scholars of early Philippine Jazz, including historian Dr. Peter Keppy and ethnomusicologist Dr. Fritz Schenker. They have been kind enough to share their materials with me for the sake of me getting to know Lolo Sunday. I am extremely thankful because they have shared The Manila Times clippings from the 1920s that were stored in microfilm, something that they had painstakingly retrieved from local archives during their research visits in the Philippines. As a result, I have learned so much about Lolo without needing to leave my computer desk.

## Meet the gang

Although he himself was a performer and an all-in-one entertainer, another key to Lolo Sunday’s theatrical career’s success was hiring the right talents. Apart from performing in local theaters like Savoy, Zorrilla, Lux, and the Manila Grand Opera House, they also went on tours to entertain people abroad, much like the Broadway musicals of today. That was the reason why I discovered a transit record of Lolo to Honolulu. Unlike the other troupe members, though, for some reason, Lolo Sunday chose to stay in Hawaii. The rest of the gang eventually made names for themselves in the Philippines:

“Katy! the Musical” is a biographical musical based on the life of Katy de la Cruz

Apart from the Philippine Vaudeville Stars, Sunday became affiliated with other vaudeville company names, including his namesake Sunday Reantaso & Co., there were also the Savoy Nifties, the Variety Stars, the Filipino Supreme Vaudeville Company, the Revue of Revues, and lastly, the Manila Nifties, the name they used overseas:

Savoy Nifties’ 1st Anniversary. The Manila Times. 3 May 1925.

## Life in Hawaii

I was never able to determine his reason for leaving my great-great-grandmother and their son in the Philippines. But my grandmother recalled that her father kept a portrait of his half-sister (who was a Catholic nun) in his wallet. This meant that Lolo Sunday somehow maintained communication with his son after his departure.

Sunday’s second daughter, a Catholic nun in Hawaii. Sources: [ 1], [ 2]

He landed various stints while in Hawaii, including being both a boxing announcer and promoter for a few years. Think of Michael “Let’s-get-ready-to-rumble” Buffer and Bob Arum rolled into one.

From gracing entertainment news pages to sports pages. 1931–1932. Sources: [ 1], [ 2], [ 3]

Some of his other odd jobs and affiliations that I found were:

I have created a timeline of all these jobs, plotted the reference news articles and details to get a clear overview and context of each event that I have found. And there were hundreds.

## Filipino community leader

As early as the 1900s, there was already a considerable population of Filipinos in Hawaii, mostly sugar plantation workers, the Sakadas. Sunday was active in the local Filipino community and engaged in various civic activities.

Letters from Sunday’s organizations during Philippine’s independence (1935) and before Hawaii’s statehood (1948)

He was also in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese in 1941. The following year, he was drafted into military service, which explains the military registration cards I discovered earlier.

Ten years before his death, he had undergone surgery and was hospitalized for a month. There were no other details regarding the nature of the surgery, but it might as well be the underlying cause of his very sudden death.

Through this small research of mine, I was able to uncover the life of my great-great-grandfather, something that had never been completely documented before. I have collated hundreds of news clippings and articles that detailed his life and activities year by year until his death in 1948, but it will be excessive to insert them all here. As a tribute to his contributions to the dawn of the Philippine entertainment industry as well as the Filipino community in Hawaii, I created his own Wikipedia page.

Last known photo of Sunday and its colorized and restored version

I will end this piece with one of Sunday’s stand-up performances that gives us a glimpse of his (and that era’s) humor. Oh, if only there were already audio or video recordings at that time!

Animated portrait of Sunday via MyHeritage’s Deep Nostalgia AI

## We will be ancestors too

To read something written by an ancestor from a hundred years ago feels so surreal. For some reason, it inspired me to come up with an essay addressed to the people of the year 2121. Maybe even to the people of the year 2500. Not that I would expect them to read it, but for sheer self-reflection, to make apparent what is truly important. “ How can we be better ancestors?”, I asked myself. Perhaps we can begin by having long-term visions of caring for the welfare of the generations to come?

# Footnotes:

## [1] National Library Archives

My father and grandmother (paternal, not the Reantasos) told me that most of our recent ancestors were farmers who lived and farmed in the same town where we still live today. In fact, I discovered that the Guevaras were one of the first families in this barangay.

I have read it in the National Library Archives, which is accessible online. It contains the history of Philippine barrios and towns. Written by local school teachers, it details the place’s pre-colonial and colonial history, plus interesting anecdotes and local customs! These documents were written by virtue of an Executive Order by President Quirino in 1951.

## [2] The land of Rs

The Reantaso clan hails from the town of Oas in Albay. This is a municipality where the majority of the family surnames start with the letter ‘R’, thanks to townfolks in the 1850s only receiving a few pages from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos. I discovered that even Sunday’s middle name starts with R — Romero (and even both of his parents’ middle names).

## [3] Generations: math & trivia

As you go up to the previous generation, the number of our ancestors grows exponentially. They generally double every generation you trace back, so there are actually a lot of “routes” to take in doing ancestral research. I found out that most of those paths lead to a dead-end due to the scarcity of existing records. Most genealogists focus on the direct paternal lineage (your surname) and maternal lineage.

2ⁿ⁺² is the formula to compute the number of ancestors in a certain generation where n is the number of “great’s” (e.g. 2¹⁺² means we have 8 great grandparents)

## [4] Sunday’s date of bi rth

Until now, I am unsure whether he was born in 1894 or in 1898. All the documents I found (except the transit document) pointed to 1898. However, he was supposed to be the eldest son, but his brother Getulio “Uyong” Reantaso was born in 1896. The 1894 birth year also more closely aligns with the first batch of pensionados in 1904 when he was said to be 8 years old. “Why would they put an incorrect birth year in his gravestone?” was what I kept asking myself. Is it possible that he “changed” his birth year when he migrated to Hawaii for some specific, maybe legal, reason?

## [5] Anglicized names

Apparently, this was a common practice at the time, as even his contemporary, Luis Borromeo, used the name Borromeo Lou as his Americanized name.

## [6] The technology of 1910–20s

Apart from having no televisions, only a few thousand Manila households had access to electricity in the first place, so watching the vaudeville shows was probably a good way to spend their evenings (or at least for people who could spare 20 centavos up to a whole peso for a single show).

## [7] Vaudeville to Bodabil

During Sunday Reantaso’s time, the entertainment shows were simply called “vaudeville” with performances in Tagalog, English, and Spanish languages. The Filipinized word “bodabil” was coined much later. In the international scene, the magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926) was probably one of the most famous vaudeville performers. Even in America, variety shows continue to this day through TV programs such as Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

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