Thanks to Adam Liu, family genealogist, who has been researching the CHamoru roots of Nicolasa Lujan Asang/Asan, on behalf of his uncle Raymond Chin, one of Tan Nicolasa’s grandsons. Adam (with the additional permission of the Chin Clan) and David Muna Borja have given me permission to share this recent correspondence between the two. This type of communication is a great example of bridging family connections (networking) and opening up other potential doors of information. It is precisely one of the reasons why the CHamoru Roots Genealogy Project exists!
Both David and my wife Fina have DNA connections with Tan Nicolasa’s family. However, although I have not been able to establish the lineal genealogy relationship between Fina, David and Tan Nicolasa. David has been able to make a connection between his family and Tan Nicolasa’s.
If you can imagine, the early part of Tan Nicolasa’s life and the events that occurred in the Asia-Pacific region were influenced by countries building their empires through colonization and conquest: Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan and the United States. As a result…enter World War I and World War II. Some CHamoru people and their families like Tan Nicolasa were sent abroad throughout Micronesia, and more so specific to this case what is known today as Papua New Guinea to farm lands. It is currently unknown, if Tan Nicolasa’s initial journey to Papua New Guinea was via coercion, coaxing or free will.
Here is an excerpt of the email exchange from Adam to David:
“Dear David,
I was very happy to receive you message on ancestry!
Thank you for explaining your connection to Leonardo Camacho and Nicolasa Castro. I'll go into some more detail now so you are aware of the context I am doing this research in. Raymond Chin's grandmother, Nicolasa Asan was born in 1903 in Garapan, Saipan. In about 1915 she was sent to what was then German New Guinea and married at the age of 13 to a Chinese hotelier by the name of Chin Yau Yee. They had one son, Chin Hoi Meen, Raymond's father, in 1917, and a daughter in 1920 who died at the age of 6 days old. Thereafter, Nicolasa apparently 'disappeared' from the record.
I commenced searching for Nicolasa almost three years ago as a project for Raymond, and also because I have always been fascinating and genealogical research. In took best part of two years to finally discover what happened. Through some fortuitous connections and detailed research I was able to make contact with living descendants of Nicolasa through her subsequent relationship.
It turns out that around 1922 Nicolasa left her Chinese husband and married a German who was a planter in New Guinea. Thereafter, the couple left and travelled back to Germany. Nicolasa lived an extraordinary life as her husband found work in West Africa in the 1920s and 1930s and took Nicolasa with him. During these years she had two daughters (Raymond Chin's father's half sisters). At one stage her German husband sent her back to Saipan for a holiday were Nicolasa was reunited with her own mother and grandmother. When WWII broke out, the family, being German citizens, were placed in a civilian internment camp in Nigeria. Shortly after, they were shipped to Jamaica, of all places, where they spent the rest of the war in internment. After the war ended Nicolasa's husband died. One daughter, Anita, married a Venezuelan man and migrated to Venezuela where she has descendants today, and amazingly, is still alive at the age of 99. The other daughter, Victoria, migrated to the USA, had no children and died several years back. Nicolasa herself died in 1999 at the age of 96 in Carson City, Nevada.
What is most amazing is that this 13 year old who left Saipan to married a Chinese may 20 years her senior, went on travel the world and live in far flung places such as New Guinea, Germany, West Africa, Jamaica, Venezuela and the USA. What's more, she only recently died in 1999, well into the lifetime of her Chinese son Chin Hoi Meen (who died in 1982) and the lifetimes of her grandchildren (one of whom is Raymond).
Just last month we arranged an international zoom linkup where the Chinese descendants of Nicolasa (now living in Brisbane, Australia and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea), and the Venezuelan-German descendants of Nicolasa (now living in Caracas), finally got to meet.
As you can see this research and the amazing reunion have generated a lot of interest in Nicolasa's life and her home of Saipan. That is why we are interested to see if we can make connections in Saipan to living relative of Nicolasa and see if we can learn more of her life and times.
I will follow your suggestion and try contact Linda [full name intentionally withheld] through facebook. Hopefully she might know more information, or otherwise, be able to point us in the right direction on who to speak to.
In the meantime David, I have also attached two documents to this email. One is a basic family tree constructed from Herman's data, showing that Nicolasa Asan is a great great granddaughter of Leonardo Camacho and Nicolasa Castro through the maternal line. The second document is Herman's data and his sources. I will also attach a photograph of when Nicolasa and her daughter Anita returned back to Saipan to reunited with her mother (Josepha Santos Luhan) and grandmother (Nicolasa Camacho Santos), for your interest. This photo originally belonged Nicolasa Asan and is now in the possession of her Venezuelan descendants.” ~Adam Liu, July 9/10, 2021 (Adam currently resides in Austrailia)
Sidebar….David Muna Borja and I are also 4th cousins through the dela Cruz-Anderson Clan stemming from the early 1800’s. For David, primarily from Don Francisco Tudela, a high ranking Spanish soldier, who married Doña Josefa Engracia dela Cruz Anderson, after his retirement in 1848. The Tudela Clan throughout the Mariana Islands archipelago remains one distinct family. For quite some time, David has also been a contributing collaborator for thie CHamoru Roots Genealogy Project.
