Sometime in April of 1900, Corporal Henry J. Flanagan of H Company, 29th United States Volunteers Infantry removed two pages from the Baptismal records of the Boac Church.
Flanagan was part of the 29th that were the first occupiers of the Church when they came ashore in Marinduque April 25th, 1900.
Flanagan had written on the bottom of one of the pages noting:
Church record taken from the Catholic Church at Boac, Isle of Marinduque after the rebels had been driven out of the church. First American soldiers to land here was H Co. 29th Inf. April 25 1900. He initialed HJF.
The two pages contain 5 baptismal records from 1891. The names on the pages are Simeon Justiniani, Josefa Ladesma, Jorge Matining, Josefa Macatong and Gregoria Montiano.
These two pages remained lost until the early 2000’s when I located them at an auction in the United States. I was able to retrieve them and they were brought back to Marinduque. Upon consultation with the church, it was decided that the best location for them was the National Museum here in Boac, where hopefully they still exist today. At the time they had no way to display them and were put in a drawer.
I was able to isolate from a group picture, Corporal Flanagan himself so we are able to get a glimpse of him. I also located in a U.S. newspaper dated July 19, 1900, a letter published by him which had details about his time in Marinduque. No mention of the records taken by him are mentioned. I would caution in reading his account that there is a defamatory use of words to describe Filipinos and was in common use during that time in the U.S. to describe persons of African heritage.
