I SEDULA

MY GRANDMOTHER'S CEDULA

Someone doing his family history came across some pre-war documents and asked me what CN meant, which he found on a document identifying his great-grandfather, with a series of numbers following the CN.  Without seeing the document, I suggested that it meant "Cédula Number."

Cédula is a Spanish word.  Originally it meant a royal order or law.  In time, it was used as a tax document and eventually a personal identification document (the cédula de identidad).

Even under the early American Naval Government, the term cédula was kept.  Every adult had to have one.  It made sense.  The people of Guam had no passports; few had drivers licenses.  The sedula (Chamorro spelling) was the only document of identification most people had. When necessary, such as for marriage, people got a baptismal certificate from the church but baptismal certificates were special whereas the sedula was the ordinary form of ID, even though there were no photos attached.

SEDULA OF EUGENIE FLORES JAMES, LATER AFLAGUE

Eugenie was born in 1900 in Palau, the daughter of a Chamorro woman (Dolores Aguon Flores) who was part of a clan that settled in Palau, and an Irish father named Joseph Henry James. By 1907 or so, the James family moved to Guam. On Guam, Eugenie married Inocencio Santos Aflague.

Both Guam sedula above are signed by Antonio Crisóstomo Suárez, the Chief Commissioner of Guam in 1920. Suårez was half Spanish, half Chamorro. My grandmother's is a post-war copy so his original signature is not seen.

This Cédula from the Philippines in 1890 may have been similar  to (if not exactly the same as) what was used on Guam since the Marianas were a province of the Philippines at the time.