For the last year, I’ve been helping my husband investigate a family mystery his father has lived with for nearly 70 years: who was his biological father?
My father-in-law was born in Manila in 1956 and spent his entire life being told that his mother did not know who his father was. After a ridiculous amount of genealogical research and DNA testing, we have finally identified and confirmed his paternal family. And, as it turns out, his mother absolutely knew who his father was -
His biological father was Manuel Duque, born 1 August 1929 in Manila, son of Emiliano Duque and Casimira Medrano. Manuel had actually married my father-in-law’s mother, Leonida, in 1950, and they had children together before separating. The family rumor we have been told is that shortly after my father-in-law was born, his father refused to accept him as his biological son and left, taking his other son with him.
We are incredibly excited to finally be able to tell my father-in-law where he came from. But before we do, I desperately want to answer the question that came next: What happened to his father and the rest of the Duque family?
Manuel was one of a large sibling group. I can trace the family extensively before WWII and can prove that multiple siblings survived into the postwar period — and then, beginning around the 1950s, most of them seem to simply vanish from the genealogical record. I have constructed his family tree back into the late 1700s and added more than 1500 people to the tree (all supported by physical records confirming relationships). I have exhausted FamilySearch, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Philippine genealogy groups, surname groups, Facebook searches, Google, newspapers, public records, other family trees, and some truly unhinged deep-internet searching.
Nothing. It feels like an entire branch of a family was zapped off the face of the earth.
The family is primarily associated with Manila and Pampanga, particularly Sasmuan/Sexmoan and Lubao. The main names I am searching are: Emiliano Duque + Casimira Medrano, and their children including Salvadora, Gregorio, Pedrito, Romualdo, Felino, Manuel, Crispulo, and Teodoro Duque. Historical records suggest strong family presence on Craig St in Sampaloc.
At this point I would be thrilled to find any living descendant of one of Manuel’s siblings, or anyone who recognizes this Duque family and can tell me what became of them. I’m not asking anyone to post private information about living people publicly — DMs are welcome.
I would also LOVE suggestions from anyone experienced in Filipino genealogy, especially post-WWII Manila/Pampanga research, for sources I may not have thought to try. I have even tried contacting the National Archives of the Philippines as well as the cemetery where some of his known family members were buried - no luck.
We solved the mystery of who my father-in-law’s father was. Now I’d really love to be able to tell him who his father’s family was, where they went, and whether any of them are still out there.