Finding Siquigs

In 2009, 6 months before I turned 30 I decided I wanted to find my dad's cousins in California whom he had not spoken with for decades. All I had was the name of my dad's aunt who had passed and a phone number that had been disconnected. I went to Facebook and found several listings with the last name Siquig, and a few of the approximate age, but my dad couldn't remember their names, so I sent messages to several and heard back from none. That was the start. I realized it was going to be a pretty long road that could possibly lead to nothing. The last time my dad saw them was in the 60's.

My grandpa grew up on a farming compound in the province of Pangasinan in the Philippines with six siblings and his many cousins. He came to the US with one of his brothers, Marcelino (Marcy). They rendezvoused in San Jose with one of their cousins, Jacinto (Tony) Siquig, whom they regarded as a brother. This was cousin Tony. Tony married Erlinda (Lily) and had eight kids. Tony and Lily visited St. Louis once before I was born, but the kids never came. My dad visited San Jose once, and that was all the contact there had been between the cousins. Lily and my grandmother, Martha, kept in touch, and she came to my grandfather's funeral in 1997, but I was still too young to understand what any of this meant.

A page from my grandfather’s photo album.

Every few years I searched the internet and sent out messages. I called many numbers that turned up on white-page listing sites, but nothing came of it. I was always pulled between my urge to find someone from this family and the possibility that some people might not want to be found.

When my wife and I moved to Oakland in 2017, the search became a more serious undertaking. Knowing that I was just up the highway from where they could possibly be living. I did my searches, white pages, ancestry sites, started jotting down names, ages, numbers. I recognized listings from previous tries. I spread the search to people around my age that could possibly be grandchildren of Tony and Lily. I wrote down a list of every name and number I could get from the various listing sites, about twenty names, and started calling. The numbers were mostly disconnected. I left a few messages, but no one responded. It was around this time I found out Tony was short for Jacinto. I began searching "Jacinto Siquig" and got what felt like a jackpot. His obituary is online and it listed the names of his children. It did not, however, list any names of his thirteen grandchildren; one thing my dad and his cousins have in common is their lack of internet presence. I had the names of the cousins, but nothing more than a few rarely-checked facebook accounts to reach out to. I went back to calling potential grandchildren. Hardly anyone picked up. Several hung up after hearing what I had to say. Then one night I made a call, and a guy picked up.

Hello?

Hi, sorry, this is going to sound weird, but are you by chance the grandchild of Jacinto Siquig?

Um, yeah.

Wait. What? Did you say yes?

Yeah.

Oh my god, you have no idea how long I've been trying to speak with someone in your family. My name is Daniel Ballesteros. I'm the grandson of Donato Ballesteros. Jacinto's cousin.

Yeah?

Well, they lost touch at the end of their lives, and my dad and his sister never really knew their cousins, so I'm just trying to reach out and talk to anyone from your side of the family about our history.

Okay.

Is there any way we could possibly meet up? I'm in Oakland, I can drive to wherever you are in San Jose. All I'm tryin' to do is have a conversation and learn a little bit about your family and maybe meet some people I'm related to for the first time. What do you think?

Nah, I'm good.

What?

I don't really wanna talk about that stuff. Good luck.

He hung up and I took that as a sign that these people did not want to be found. After eight years I finally made contact, and was told 'no thanks'. I was crushed. In the span of about 40 seconds I went from the highest highs when I realized my phone search landed on a family member to an absolute gut punch of a disappointment. I gave up the search.

Visiting the Jacinto “Tony” Siquig Northside Community Center in San Jose

And then, in 2019, my son, Dominic “Nico” was born and I was suddenly struck with an even stronger urge to find someone else from this family. The obituary indicated the Siquigs are a fairly large family; surely there would be someone who would be willing to speak with me. It also mentioned that Uncle Tony had been a community organizer for Filipino farm workers. He was such an important figure for a time, the city of San Jose named its Northside Community Center after him. Bingo. Someone at the community center must know of someone in the family. Tony's name is on the outside of the building. I called and when I asked the director if she had any contact information for anyone from the Siquig family for which the building was named after. She was confused. She had no idea the building was named after anyone. It seems it had been many years since anyone from the family had any interaction with the space. A dead end at a building named after the family I was trying to find.

San Jose No. 017 (Tree in front of Jacinto Siquig Northside Community Center)

In 2022 I did the rounds of internet searching looking again for any info on any of Tony's seven living children (one of his daughters had passed). I learned his son Anthony plays rock guitar in a band in Grass Valley. He had a facebook page that hadn't been updated in several months. I sent a message anyway. There were no phone numbers, but he had regular gigs at a couple venues in that area so I called them and left messages. I spoke to several people who knew him, all of which thought my call was strange, but none managed to get him the word. I found a few listings for a few Richard Siquigs and called them all, leaving messages when possible. I crossed my fingers and hung up the search until the next urge.

About three weeks later I was at work and my phone buzzed with a number from Carmel Valley. It was Richard Siquig returning my call.

Tony and I with Nico turned away at the Siquig reunion lunch

We made arrangements for a longer conversation, and with his wife Mary too. She had turned into a bit of a keeper of the Siquig family history, and I learned much more about Jacinto. He had a strong desire for higher education, which was the initial motivation for him to come to the US. It wasn't until he arrived that he learned those promises were lies and his opportunities would be limited to working in the hospitality industry (like my grandfather) or farming in the central valley with the scores of other young Filipino men who came here during US colonial rule in the Philippines between 1899 and 1949. During that time, the number of Filipino women allowed to come to the states as nurses paled in comparison to the number of men, and interracial marriage was banned in California until the Supreme Court struck down all remaining anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states in 1967. So when Jacinto met his future wife, Erlinda, a Mexican from a farming family from the central coast, they eloped to New Mexico.

This conversation led to another, and they connected me with their daughter, Katie (Aha! One of the grandchildren), who also lives in the area. When businesses began opening during the pandemic they arranged for a full Siquig family holiday lunch in San Jose and invited my small family. The hour drive down to San Jose was surreal and overwhelming. Until four months prior all of these people were the hardest people to find and now we I was about to be in the same restaurant with them. ALL of them. At once. In some ways I think I am still processing that day. Everyone was told that a Ballesteros was going to join, so on top of the overwhelm there was some additional anxiety about being the one non-Siquig. When we walked into the restaurant, all fears and worries were put to rest. I recognized them immediately. Our smiles connected and we started hugging before we even spoke. The Siquigs are warm people. I met and chatted with my dad's cousins and a couple grandkids around my age. I met Richard and Anthony (Tony). I met their other brother and two of their sisters. I learned about the young man I had made contact with whose immediate family has experienced some tragedy, and being around the larger family is difficult (not to mention speaking about everything with a complete stranger). We all left the lunch pledging to keep in touch and I told them I'd have my camera next time.

Donato Ballesteros in Honolulu, HI with camera, 1932

A couple years have gone by and I've texted and talked with a few Siquigs, but hadn't seen any of them since that lunch until a week ago. My family and I made the trip up to Grass Valley to visit with Tony and his wife Bonnie and see him perform. We got there early and were able to hang for a bit and make a few pictures before he had to start getting ready for his gig. Tony and I talked a little about the family. He told me about the time my dad came out to visit before going to Vietnam, and how he thought my dad, 5 years his senior, was "the coolest". He told me about Uncle Marcy Ballesteros, who was like a second father in the Siquig clan when Jacinto was gone for longer farming projects. I learned Jacinto took a horse-drawn wagon and plough up into the hills above Los Altos and Woodside to carve the earth into a condition to support the hobby-vineyards that now dot the spreads of some of the wealthiest people in this country. It was an effortless conversation. He recounted stories he had been told as a child about our great-ancestors ripping trees from the ground with their bare hands, and about how he was told one of his uncles in the Philippines was an itinerant musician and the musical gene passed on to him (this made me think of a picture I have of my grandfather with a camera around his neck). Catching me up on stories that had been passed around his family, and I cherished every second of his generosity. These stories are part of the family history I had set out to learn 15 years ago.

Tony Siquig and Daniel Ballesteros, 2024. photo by Dominic “Nico” Jay Ballesteros

I brought a camera and made some pictures that have been in my head for over a decade. Tony was a patient and professional sitter, and I was grateful. It’s important for me that my son, Nico, be a part of this journey as well, so he was there making a photograph of his own. I want him to know as much as there is to know about where he came from, that he is the continuation, as we all are, of a long line of ancestors, and that we are all connected.

This was the first trip of many to Grass Valley, and hopefully other trips, to visit more Siquigs throughout the state and country. One funny coincidence is several Siquigs have left California and are living in places not far from where Ballesteros' who left St. Louis have also ended up, in Kentucky and Texas.

I read this quote a long time ago and it still serves as the motivation for me in this project.

"They who do not know how to look back on where they came from, will never get to their destination."

-Jose Rizal

To be continued...

Yosemite