Nazhou Gu Zupu 1948

Susan Chock Salgy

• Nazhou Gu Zupu Vol-1 那洲古氏族譜
• Nazhou Gu Zupu Vol-2 那洲古氏族譜
• Nazhou Gu Zupu Vol-3 那洲古氏族譜
• Nazhou Gu Zupu Vol-4 那洲古氏族譜

About the 1948 Nazhou Gu Zupu

The Nazhou Gu Zupu published in 1948 is a great treasure for Gu/Goo descendants from Guangdong. It contains essential information that connects many living descendants to their ancestors, but for a number of reasons it is extremely hard to find.

“This edition of the  Nazhou Gu Zupu was published in 1948 and was the zupu of Chock Chin’s grandmother,” explained Louise Skyles, our professional genealogist based in Taiwan.  “There are seventeen generations documented.  The first ancestor was Gu/Goo Yu Bao古瑜保, who was descended from Gu Feng Xin.  He moved from Gulao Village古勞 to Nazhou Village那洲. This was the commencement of the Nazhou Gu Clan.”

The organization of the information within the zupu is important to understand if you want to use it to research your family. Louise elaborates: “There are four volumes of the Nazhou Gu Zupu. All the volumes record different branches of the Nazhou Gu Clan. In each volume, there are specific details about individuals including names, births, deaths, burial places, daughters’ husbands, and wives’ fathers. However, there are no pedigree charts. In volume 1, there are some stories about the Gu zupu.” 

As you might expect, these records are extremely hard to maintain with accuracy over the centuries. Clans ideally want to update the information at regular intervals (every 60 years is a common goal), making sure that new generations are properly documented as time goes on.  However, this kind of work requires a certain amount of economic stability and peace in the land. When there are major disruptions such as wars, economic upheaval, famines, political unrest, epidemics, droughts and floods, the resources of the families are stressed and there is little time to devote to this kind of record keeping.

Saving the 1948 Nazhou Gu Zupu from destruction

There is a fascinating story behind the 1948 Nazhou Gu Zupu — how it was created, maintained in the face of great adversity, and saved through heroic efforts and great personal risk.  Several years ago the Gu descendant who was instrumental in saving it from destruction wrote an article about it that appeared on a Chinese site. He donated it to the Zhuhai Museum in 2006 for safekeeping. Here is Louise Skyles’ English translation of that article.

The 1948 edition of the zupu has not been available to the public, particularly researchers outside of China.  Even today, the most current version of the record that you can find on any public repository is the 1912 version.

How we found the 1948 edition

In March of this year (2021), we decided to expand the scope of our research plan to include the female lines of the family tree. (Not a typical Chinese approach, but the way we think about genealogy in the West, and definitely the way I have been taught to do it in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

Louise began looking for the families of the women who married into the Zhuo clan, whenever their father’s information was included in our Zhuo jiapus. When it came to one particular man — Gu Lue Shen of Nazhou Village, the father of my 15th ancestor Miss Gu (who married a Zhuo), Louise had trouble locating him in the 1912 Gu zupu that she found in the Chinese collections at familysearch.org, because it appeared that some pages had been ripped out of the book, and they were the generations where we expected to find him.

We later learned that pages were sometimes torn from these records when family members had to flee the village in the face of some approaching catastrophe (such as a great natural disaster, enemy invasion, etc.)  If a person felt the records might be destroyed, or they might never be able to return home, but there was no time to make a copy, they hurriedly tore out their own family’s information and took it with them. This would ensure that at least some part of the record would be preserved.

Although we can’t be sure exactly what the circumstances were, we believe that is what happened to the page in the 1912 edition on which Gu Lue Shen was listed.  It was torn from the book, making him impossible to find.

Even though the clear proof was not available in the jiapu, Louise made a bold decision to enter him in my familysearch.org tree at the place where she reckoned he should be, based on inferential clues and deductive reasoning drawn from decades of experience with such records.  She wrote:

“Gu Lue Shen’s family tree was not connected and was submitted by several people to familysearch.org. Each one of them only submitted some sections of the family tree, so I had to map the family tree together. Even though I trusted the Spirit and my many years of research experiences, in the back of my mind, I still wished that somehow there could be a Gu Family Jiapu with Gu Lue Shen’s name on it.”

This pivotal leap of faith — which made her uneasy despite being sure it was correct —  enabled her to form a crucial connecting link between the generations that came before and after. As a result, when Mr. Luo, a curator at the Zhuhai Museum, searched the web for him a little while later, he found him in my tree.

As it turns out, the person that Mr. Luo was actually looking for was not in the Nazhou Gu Zupu after all.  Louise helped Mr. Luo find him in the Shenqian Gu Zupu. But this was the event that led Mr. Luo to send a digital copy of this rare 1948 Nazhou Gu Zupu to Louise.  And when Louise received the four volumes of the zupu, she was delighted to learn that her educated guess about where my ancestor should be positioned in the pedigree was fully validated. She wrote:

“There are 4 books of the jiapu, in book 2, I found your 3rd grandfather Gu Lue Shen’s name. There are over a hundred pages in book 2.  I have checked their names in familysearch, and most of book 2’s names are not submitted. And it also confirmed that in March I had linked to the right family tree even without seeing Gu Lue Shen’s name in the jiapu. Here is that page — Gu Lue Shen’s name is highlighted in yellow.”

This connection led to many more mutually beneficial experiences with the museum, and at this point Louise and Mr. Luo of the Zhuhai Museum are actively collaborating in researching the descendants of Gu and other clans who migrated from Guangdong to Hawaii in the 19th century and early 20th century.  This is helping with some important museum initiatives, as well as greatly accelerating the research efforts on my family tree.

Connecting Point between Shenqian Gu and Nazhou Gu

Although they have separate zupus, the Shenqian Gu and the Nazhou Gu are really just two branches of the same family based in two different locations — cousin lines with a common ancestor.

Louise pointed me to the point in the pedigree where the two branches of the Gu clan separated.  She said, “On page 55 of Shenqian Jiapu Vol 1, the yellow highlighted 9th ancestor was Gu/Goo Zong Yue古宗悅, who was born in 1007 AD, in Mei County (Now Meizhou City), Guangdong. He was the common ancestor of the Shenqian Gu Clan and the Nazhou Gu Clan.

The Shenqian Gu Clan descended from the first son Gu/ Goo Feng Yi古鳳儀 who is circled in red. The Nazhou Gu Clan descended from the third son Gu/Goo Feng Xin古鳳信 who is circled in blue and was Chock Chin’s grandmother’s clan.”

“Here is the tomb of the 9th generation ancestor Gu Zong Yue古宗悅 (1007-1062). His tomb is in Dongsheng Village, Sanjiao Town, Meizhou City, Guangdong. His wife, Miss Zhao, is buried next to him.”

As the common ancestor of two large and important Gu clans, he is venerated by thousands of people.

Here is the record of Gu Zong Yue in familysearch.org.