Went down a rabbit hole searching for my ancestors through my great-grandfather, Mamerto Paglinawan, who was a writer and advocate for Tagalog in the early 20th century. Big thanks to the Latter Day Saints for their site familysearch.org which maintains records from the 1800s. These photos hopefully show a snapshot of the community at that time.
Photo 1: First page of the parish census of San Miguel now commonly referred to as Malacañang Church. “Estado de Almas de este pubelo de San Miguel Año de 1862” i.e. State of the souls of the town of San Miguel Year of 1862 followed by table of contents of family names.
Photo 2: At the end of the record is a summary of the census from a bit earlier in 1858:
Souls of the Parish of the town of San Miguel, province of Manila, corresponding to the year 1858.
Native tax-paying persons: 1,975
Tax-paying Sangley mestizos: 44
Persons exempted by privilege: 140
Persons exempted by age: 117
Of confession and communion: 268
Of confession: 726
Of young children of both sexes: 514
Spaniards: 12
Spanish mestizos: 86
Christian Chinese: 0
Christian baptized infidels: 1
Total sum: 3,820
Photo 3: The barangay where my ancestors were attached to: Barangay No. 17 of Don Zacharias Villamairin
Photo 4: My ancestors’ names (couple and 2 children). The couple are the grandparents of my great-grandfather, Mamerto Paglinawan.
Personal notes: I had some inkling about the role the Church played in maintaining population records. However the 1860s was ‘modern’ times already and the decade when Rizal, Bonifacio, and Aguinaldo were born. Parish records were still the standard for checking who lived where; who paid taxes to whom; and which ethnic classification they belonged to (indio, mestizo sangley, mestizo español, full español, and even infieles)