Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 10, 1 October 1993 — Moʻokū'ahau: tips on researching genealogy [ARTICLE]

Moʻokū'ahau: tips on researching genealogy

by Maria Kaina, Operation 'Ohana coordinator For Hawaiians there are many problems encountered when they attempt to climb the family tree and leam about the 'ohana's history. Some Hawaiians have been cut off from knowledge about their blood parents because of hānai, meaning they were raised by another family. Some people were not told they were hānai and suffered shock and bewilderment in adulthood when they learned about the void in their past. Then comes the search for identity, to find out who you are and where you eame from. Finding a plaee to be, to belong, is necessary to feeling complete and achieving

peaee. Even if you were raised in an intact and loving family, many Hawaiian parents are reluctant to talk about the past with their ehildren and the link to the family history is broken. Uncomfortable memories, emotions and upsets prevent communication between the generations. So what ean be done? You ean do what many others have done and that is to research the past for answers. Start by gathering information from your living 'ohana, aunties, uncles and tutu. Perhaps you have a family Bible or an oral genealogy that someone in the family has written down. Search the house for certificates, photos, awards and newspaper clippings.

Organize your information on Family Group sheets and a Pedigree chart. Then go to the Department of Health in Honolulu and look for Kimo Saffery-Tripp at the Hawai'i Genealogy Project. He will sit down with you for as long as it takes to search out the birth, marriage and death certificates for your family. This is a free service, you only pay the $2 service fee for the certificates found. If you are an outer-island resident, older birth, marriage and death index ean be searched by film through the LDS (Mormon) Family History Centers. This is also true of many of the Archives records and the Grantee and Grantor Indexes from the Bureau continued on page 8

Mo oku'auhau (genealogy)

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of Conveyances. After you have gone to Kimo and have the family's vital certificates, again organize your information onto your chart and group sheets. You are now ready to supplement your genealogy with records found at the Hawai'i State Archives, the Hawaiian Pacific Room at the main library, the Family History Centers and the Bureau of Conveyances. Land records are invaluable in constructing the family tree prior to 1900 when the Department of Health records were non-existent or sketchy. Because family members often sold or granted land to one another, 'ohana relationships are explained in the deeds. Also, around the turn of the century, many Hawaiians were recording their genealogies in the Bureau of Conveyances records. These ean be found by looking for your family surname. The Gilman family recorded their family chart whieh was 10 feet long. Some early adoptions and hānai were recorded in land records. For instance, a full Hawaiian child was given to the Duvauchelles on Moloka'i in the 1800s. When the 1 1 V t 4 k»

Hawaiian parents gave the child to the Duvauchelle family, they also gave them a pieee of land whieh went with the child. This information, that eame from a deed, was sufficient for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to accept the hānai child as Hawaiian. In another example, the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands questioned the parentage of a Rodrigues boy who was raised by the Rodrigues' neighbors, the Robello family (it was shown that the two families were neighbors through the 1900 and 1910 census records). The boy's true parentage was proven through two land deeds, a parcel given to him by his hānai parents, and a parcel given to him by his blood grandmother. The true relationships were defined in the deeds and he was accepted as being 50 percent Hawaiian. Many times a death certificate for a person who died of leprosy in the early 1900s will not show parentage. This was done to protect the privacy of the family, as there was a stigma of shame attached to leprosy in those days.

Write to the Hansen's Disease Project to find out this information: • Birth date and plaee • Name of parents • Race (by percentage Hawaiian) • Name of brothers and sisters • Name of spouse • Where buried These records are important to Hawaiians. In searching the Titcomb genealogy, the Hansen Disease record was the only one found that confirmed that Kalou Titcomb was Hawaiian. The record named her parents and brothers and sisters during the time frame when Hawaiians carried one name and family eonnections were difficult to establish. These are some tips and aids for doing the family history. Maria Kaina, of OHA's Operation 'Ohana ancestry registry, ean help with further genealogy assistance. She and her assistant, Kimberiy Kau, are making community Operation 'Ohana presentations and eonducting genealogy workshops for groups and organizations. They ean be reached at 586-3739. ... r ....... , » r 3 .... r r . r r ,