Contracts and Other Old Documents as Sources for Family History and Genealogy in Taiwan

Shih-Chang Wang

Born in Taiwan. Resides in Taipei. Researher, Comittee for Taiwan Historical Studies, Association for Asian Studies. Author, Historian.

PRIVATE OLD FAMILY DOCUMENTS COMMONLY SEEN IN OLD TAIWANESE FAMILIES

Old family documents are important materials for compiling family histories and genealogies. They are also primary sources for local and national histories written by genealogists and historians. Approximately fourteen types of old family documents can be commonly seen in old Taiwanese familes. They include:

Official Announcements and Documents

These include imperial edicts, announcements, notices, decrees, documents concerning the colonizing of aboriginal or border lands, directives, orders, bulletins, official announcements, medals for gentry, joint contracts and passports.

Land Contracts

These include the agreements, contracts and recipts of farms, land trading, presentation, description, exchanges and cultivation; there are generally eight types of contracts and receipts:

a. Contracts of land trading and presentation: This type of contract includes trading of plain lands, farms, gardens, unused lands, fishing ponds, "Feng Shui" (geomancy) lands, and estates.

b. Cultivation licenses: These licenses were issued by the government and allowed the license holder to explore and cultivate virgin plain land.

c. Land leases and cultivation contracts: These kinds of contracts were established between the Chinese or Ping Pu aborigines who had obtained the cultivation license and the tenant farmer. Under such contracts, the land proprietor or landlord would let the tenant farmer cultivate the unused plain.

d. Farm land and land leases: Farm land leases were established between the landlord or small farm landowner and the thenant farmer, while land leases were established between the land proprietor and leaseholder.

e. Estate appropriation and land description agreements: An agreement appropriating the estate to others for managment or defining the unclear boundary of the land.

f. Official survey certificates: After the virgin land has been explored and cultivated, the landowner would request an official survey of the land from the governement for the levy of land taxes. After the authorites had completed the survey work, a land certificate would be issued to the landwoner.

g. Land ownership certificates, land survey (measurement) receipts and land register copies: When Taiwan was ruled by the Japanese, a provisional land bureau was established in the thirty-first year of the Meiji reign (1899). In Meiji 36 (1903), the bureau surveyed the ownership of all pieces of land and put them into the survey record. Receipts and certificates of ownership were issued to the landowners who would, when necessary, apply for copies of the land receipts. In 1950, the land registration record replaced the receipt but the owner could still apply for a copy if necessary.

h. Land ownership succession registers, ownership transfer registers: During the Japanese reign and after Taiwan was restored to China, whenever the owner of a piece of land died, his legatees had to apply for the ownership succession register; for land trading, the owner had to apply for the ownership transfer register because the owner had to possess a copy of this kind of register.

Rental Taxes, Property Deed Receipts and Certificates

a. Property deed receipts and certificates were issued to people who had paid taxes to the government after they had bought a piece of farm land or real estate. The receipt or certificate carried the names of the traders, location, area, price, and tax amount of the land.

b. The primary lessor receipt: A kind of contract carrying details of the purchase and sale of the rentalships or stating the rental relationships between the primary and secondary lessors.

c. Land lease receipts: A kind of tax-levied contract carrying details of the rental relations between the secondary lessor or landlord and tenant or land lessor. A certain amont of deposit or rental was stated.

d. Farm cultivation and border land leases: A kind of tax-levied contract carryig the rental relations between a plain aborigine and a tenant farmer upon a piece of virgin land which had been appropriated to the plain aborigine by the Manchu government. A certain amount of deposit or rental was stated.

e. Miscellaneous duty receipts: These included storage duty, port duty, and transportation duty.

Documents of the Distribution and Managment of Properties

A kind of record known as a lotting document or lotting subagreement, receipt, or a will carrying details or the allotment of properties and money among members or a family.

Mortgage and Loan Documents (I.O.U.)

These include mortgages, mortgage transfers, pawns, loans, loan mortgages, and credit documents. To mortgage real estate (Tien) was to mortgage the ownership of the real estate to the creditor; the creditor was entitled to cultivate or make use of the land or to rent the land to the tenant farmer for cultivation after a certain sum of tax had been paid. To mortgage the receipts or certificates of real estate (Tai Chieh) was to pawn these receipts or certificates to the creditor so that the creditor was entitled to receive the rentals from the real estate as a kind of interest. Credit receipts were documents carrying the amount of cash being lent and borrowed without a mortgage.

Personal Contracts and Agreements

a. Bond service contracts: There were children selling agreements, son selling agreements, adoption agrrements, women selling agreements, wife selling agreements, and bondsman contracts. Son selling and adoption contracts were a kind of agreement specifying the trading of a non-relative male.

b. Children adoption and their succession agreements: Most such documents specify the adoption of a male blood relation, mostly nephews or sons of one's brother. In China this kind of relation was described as ko fang. Adoption of a male without relation was not popular in China or in Taiwan in the past.

c. Marriage agreements, marraige-into-the-wife's-family agreements, remarriage agreements, and divorce agreements: There were two kinds of marriage agreements, chein and kun. Chein was a document delivered by the male's family to the female's family; the kun was the reverse. these documents told how proud the family was of this marriage and were full of blessings, such as the hope that the couple would be on good terms forever and that they would bear lots of children.