Finding Your Roots

(bright music) - [Henry] Turning to another line of Lea's mother's roots, we encountered another piece of heritage that had been lost.

Lea's great-great-grandfather was a man named Pedro Malhabor.

Pedro's surname is decidedly not Filipino, and Lea has relatives who believed that he was a professor of physics from Germany.

We found nothing to suggest that Pedro was a physicist, but in the early 1870s, when he likely arrived in the Philippines, a wave of European naturalists, including a large number of Germans, were visiting the islands to explore and study.

So we think if Pedro was a professor, he was likely a naturalist, not a physicist.

- Okay.

- Sound reasonable?

- Yeah, it does.

- So let's see what else we found out about this mysterious Pedro.

Would you please turn the page?

- (laughing) Okay.

My gosh, this is amazing.

- [Henry] Lea, we're back to the year 1872.

- [Lea] Oh, here it is!

(laughing) I love it!

Oh my goodness!

- [Henry] (chuckles) Would you please read the transcribed section?

- Okay.

"On the 2nd of January, "I baptized a mestizo German boy named Amadeo Malhabor, "son of Pedro Malhabor from the Prussian Nation."

- [Henry] Nation, that's right.

- And of Victoriana Perez, a native of the city of Manila.

- [Henry] Have you ever heard of the Prussian Nation?

- I must have have been in a European history class, but- - Well, at the time, the Kingdom of Prussia was a vast territory that spread across what are now parts of Northern Germany, Poland, and Russia.

The part of Prussia, where Pedro likely came from is in modern day... - [Both] Germany.

- Because Germany wasn't Germany then.

- Right.

- And you heard the rumor, but- - I mean, the only connection that I knew with regards to the Malhabor was that it was German.

But beyond that, we didn't know anything about anything like this.

(bright music) - [Henry] This baptism record was a boon to our researchers, because it not only listed the name of Pedro's Filipino wife, Victoriana Perez, but also names his parents, Lea's third great grandparents.

- His paternal grandparents are Enrique Malhabor and Louisa Hinza.

What is that?

- You just met your great, great, great grandparents from Germany.

Those are Germans.

- Yes, Hinza looks German, yeah.

- Yes, but both of them.

Enrique, you know, they would've just Hispanicized- - Yeah, he was probably Heinrich.

- Heinrich, right.

What's it like to learn the names of your German ancestors, unmixed?

- (laughing) Wild.

I'm definitely sharing all of this with my daughter when I get home.

She's gonna (laughing) have a fit, because she's the most Asian looking person.

- Oh, she is?

- She really is.

And so for her to learn that your great, great, great, great grandparents... - What do you think all these ancestors would have made of you, dear?

- I don't know.

I honestly don't know what they would've thought.

Maybe the scientists would've been disappointed (laughs) that I ended up in the arts.

- Everybody would've been happy you won that Tony.

- (laughing) I think so.

(Henry laughing) I think at that point, everybody would've been quiet.

- You're doing all right.

(both laugh)