WHATEVER HAPPENED TO....?

 

FAUSTINO CHARGUALAF???

Bernard Punzalan over at chamorroroots.com shared some photos of busts molded of Chamorro men in 1839.

A French scientific expedition visited Guam that year and one of the academic team made these molds, and these photos were later taken of them and are now at the National Museum of Natural History in France. These busts, in my opinion, have an effect unlike photographs. It's almost as if the man is really there, just asleep with eyes closed.

Since the busts come with names, I thought it would be interesting to see if the men came up in old records and if we could see what eventually happened to them.

The man above is identified as FAUSTINO CHARGUALAF from Humåtak.

Chargualaf is not a surname that makes us think of Humåtak as quickly as the surnames Quinata or Topasña, but records show there were quite a bit of Chargualafs in Humåtak in the 1800s, though in time their number decreased and Chargualaf remained more prominent in Inalåhan and Malesso'.

For example, in 1897 there were NINE people in Humåtak named Chargualaf. By 1920, there was only ONE. But in the early and mid 1800s, there were many more Chargualafs in Humåtak and Faustino was one of them.

According to the Humåtak church records, Faustino married Salomé Quinata. 

From this marriage of Faustino and Salomé at least one son, Ignacio, died in 1837 and probably died in childhood or youth, which was much more common in the old days than now. 

But there could have been more children, as many burials do not give the parents' names. If all the children died young, that explains why we don't see anyone identified as descendants of Faustino and Salomé later on, and the Chargualaf surname slowly disappeared in Humåtak up to World War II.

Maybe there are some Chargualafs in Humåtak today, but they probably came from another branch of Chargualafs from another village and moved to Humåtak only recently.