PARISH RECORDS

All the parochial records of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish have already been computerized. The computerization project started in April 2009. The encoding of all the records took six months to finish with eight encoders doing the job. Now it has become easy and fast to ask for records of Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage and Death. Unfortunately, although the parish was erected in 1630, the earliest record dates back to 1945 only. The main reason for this was that the parish rectory and with it the parochial records were completely destroyed during the second world war in 1944. Hence for Baptism the first recorded data begins with those baptized in January 15, 1947. For Confirmation the records start with October 21, 1947. Marriage data start from May 26, 1945 and Death Register starts on January 15, 1947.

The parish archives

Sometimes however, data cannot right away be found in the parish registers. There are a number of reasons for these. First it could be that the names are different from what have been entered in the registers. Especially with cases of baptism it was a practice before that only the godparents would bring the child for baptism. The result would be that different names or spelling of names and other pertinent data would be given to the parish secretary. There are also a number of cases where the data were not entered at all at the parish registers. Such cases happen when the sacraments, like baptism, were done in the barrio chapels and due to negligence were not transmitted to the parish secretaries for recording. There are also other times when the sacrament was celebrated in a different parish and so therefore the data being asked could not be found in spite of diligent search from the records.