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Genealogy

Genealogical databases, websites, and bibliographies to aid users in the pursuit of their family history and origins. Last Updated: Feb 26, 2025 5:21 PM

Asian Genealogy Materials

Asian genealogy resources and, when available, related materials at the Virginia Room.

Chinese Ancestors

Introduction and General Guides 

Names / Surnames 

Genealogy Records 

Immigration to the U.S. 

Periodicals 

Maps 

Virginia Room Resources 

  • Searching For Your Chinese Birth Family, by Wesley O. Hagood (VREF 929.351 Hagood 2021) - Provides detailed information about the three primary types of search that can be used to locate Chinese birth family members and recommends how best to search, if Chinese adoptees and their adoptive parents hope to perform a successful search. 
  • Genealogy and the Librarian: Perspectives on Research, Instruction, Outreach and Management, Edited by Carol Smallwood and Vera Gubnitskaia; Foreword by D. Joshua Taylor (VREF 929.1 GENE 2018) - Chapter "Contemporary Chinese Genealogy" by Hong Cheng (7 pgs.) covers: Chinese Genealogy: From Traditional to Contemporary – Utilizing Chinese Genealogy: From Academic Research to Library Collection – Getting Involved in Chinese Genealogy: Modernization and Standardization. 
  • Using Civilian Records for Genealogical Research in the National Archives Washington, DC, Area, by the National Archives and Records Administration (VREF 929.1 UNIT 2009) - Genealogical research -- Before visting the National Archives -- Using the National Archives -- Finding aids -- Federal census -- Population cencus schedules -- Soundex indexes -- Soundex coding guides -- Enumeration district maps -- Nonpopulation census schedules, 1850-80 -- Immigration -- U.S. Customs Service -- Immigration and naturalization -- East Coast ports -- Gulf Coast ports -- Mexican border crossings -- Pacific Coast ports -- Canadian border crossings -- Alien files -- Arrival records and crew lists, 1957-82 -- Chinese exclusion, 1882-1943 -- Naturalization -- Passport applications -- Visa applications, 1914-40 -- Seamen's protection certificates -- Public land -- Civilian employees -- Official register of the United States -- Application, recommendation, and appointment letters -- Official personnel files -- Residents of the District of Columbia -- American Indians -- African Americans -- Slavery -- Federal censuses -- Southern Claims Commission -- Freedman's Saving and Trust -- War relocation authority -- Japanese interments -- American overseas territories -- Where to find vital statistics -- National Archives online -- National Archives regional facilities -- Contacting the National Archives. 
  • In Search of Your Asian Roots : Genealogical Research on Chinese Surnames, by Sheau-yueh J. Chao (VREF 929.4 C 2000) - Alphabetical listing of Chinese surnames, with brief annotations giving the history of the surname and mentioning prominent persons of that name, locales where families of that name have flourished, and important bibliographic references. Includes bibliographical references and index. In English and Chinese. 
  • The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas, by Gérard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau ; maps by Catherine Petit ; translated from the French by A.M. Berrett (VREF 304.8 C 1995, or through the Internet Archive) - A groundbreaking perspective on the great religious and cultural diasporas of the world. Here, the very definition of "diaspora"--which embraces forced exile, voluntary migrations, and "minorities of inferiorization"--is examined in detail. The text is richly complemented with full-color maps and an iconography of synagogues, churches, and other cultural markers. Contents: The problem of diasporas -- The Jewish diaspora -- The Armenian diaspora -- The Gypsy diaspora -- The Black diaspora -- The Chinese diaspora -- The Indian diaspora -- The Irish diaspora -- The Greek diaspora -- The Lebanese diaspora -- The Palestinian diaspora -- The Vietnamese and Korean diasporas. 
  • Ethnic Genealogy: A Research Guide, Edited by Jessie Carney Smith, foreword by Alex Haley (VREF 929.1 ETHN 1983) - Chapter 8: "Asian-American Records and Research" by Greg Gubler (70 pgs.), covers: Research Problems and Approaches - Immigrant Groups and Settlement Patterns (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indochinese, Other Asians) -- Records in the Continental U.S. and Hawaii -- Records Abroad -- A Typical Chinese- and Japanese-American Search. 
  • Studies in Asian genealogy (1969) Edited by Spencer J. Palmer (VREF 929 W) - Cover title in Chinese characters. Includes index. These collected papers are based upon those which were delivered at the World Conference of Records at Salt Lake City in August, 1969. Contents: Chinese genealogical records.--Chinese written history.-- Japanese family records.--Korean genealogical sources.--Indian tribal genealogies.--Asian immigrants in America.--Computer technology and Asian genealogical research.--Glossary of Chinese terms. 

Miscellaneous 

  • Library of Virginia/Virginia Humanities: New Virginians: 1619–2019 & Beyond – Interview with Zhiyi (Joycee) Wang, native of China 
  • Library of Virginia: Virginia Women in History has honored three APIDA Virginia Changemakers, who have made a difference in their community, state, and nation. Among them is Pearl Fu, native of China. 
  • Library of Virginia: Business and Organization Records: 

    • Universal Leaf Tobacco Company Records, 1904-1995 (Accession 41779): chartered in 1918 after a merger of 6 tobacco companies, this company expanded into China in 1935 and documents its work there primarily through mid-twentieth century financial records. Read more about this company from the Library of Virginia's blog, The Uncommon Wealth. 

    • Pioneer America Society Records, 1929-1984 (Accession 40235): founded to document the United States’ cultural landscape, artifacts, and architecture, as well as to encourage research educational programs, and preservation; records include folders concerning China and Japan

  • Library of Congress: Chinese Origins of U.S. Families: A Guide to Local History and Genealogy Sources 
  • National Archives and Records Administration: Chinese Heritage 
  • National Archives and Records Administration: Asian American and Pacific Islander Records 
  • New York Public Library Blog: Chinese Genealogy and Local History Resources 
  • Museum of Chinese in America (NYC)  
  • Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (2017) by Julian Lim – available through the Internet Archive. "With the railroad's arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region into a booming international hub of economic and human activity. Following the stream of Mexican, Chinese, and African American migration, Julian Lim presents a fresh study of the multiracial intersections of the borderlands, where diverse peoples crossed multiple boundaries in search of new economic opportunities and social relations. However, as these migrants came together in ways that blurred and confounded elite expectations of racial order, both the United States and Mexico resorted to increasingly exclusionary immigration policies in order to make the multiracial populations of the borderlands less visible within the body politic, and to remove them from the boundaries of national identity altogether" - Includes bibliographical references and index. 
  • Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South (2016)  by Adrienne Berard.  (Electronic resource available through Overdrive; also through the Internet Archive) -  A generation before Brown v. Board of Education struck down America's "separate but equal" doctrine, one Chinese family and an eccentric Mississippi lawyer fought for desegregation in one of the greatest legal battles never told. On September 15, 1924, Martha Lum and her older sister Berda were barred from attending middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi. The girls were Chinese American and considered by the school to be "colored"; the school was for whites. This event would lead to the first US Supreme Court case to challenge the constitutionality of racial segregation in Southern public schools. 
  • The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee (305.895 L 2015) - This book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States, published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Part one: Beginnings: Asians in the Americas. Los Chinos in New Spain and Asians in early America; Coolies -- Part two: The making of Asian America during the age of mass migration and Asian exclusion. Chinese immigrants in search of Gold Mountain; "The Chinese must go!": the anti-Chinese movement ; Japanese immigrants and the "yellow peril"; "We must struggle in exile": Korean immigrants; South Asian immigrants and the "Hindu invasion"; "We have heard much of America": Filipinos in the U.S. empire; Border crossings and border enforcement: undocumented Asian immigration -- Part three: Asian America in a world at war. "Military necessity": the uprooting of Japanese Americans during World War II; "Grave injustices": the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II; Good war, Cold War -- Part four: Remaking Asian America in a globalized world. Making a new Asian America through immigration and activism; In search of refuge: Southeast Asians in the United States; Making a new home: Hmong refugees and Hmong Americans; Transnational immigrants and global Americans -- Part five: twenty-first-century Asian Americans. The "rise of Asian Americans"?: myths and realities -- Epilogue: Redefining America in the twenty-first century.  
  • The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, by Iris Chang (305.8951 C 2003) - Chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendants: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws and anti-Asian violence, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American. 
  • Chinese in the Post-Civil War South: A People Without a History (1999) by Lucy M. Cohen – available through the Internet Archive. In much of the United States, immigrants from China banded together in self-enclosed communities, “Chinatowns,” in which they retained their language, culture, and social organization. In the South, however, the Chinese began to merge into the surrounding communities within a single generation’s time, quickly disappearing from historical accounts and becoming, as they themselves phrased it, a “mixed nation.” This book traces the experience of the Chinese arriving to the South during Reconstruction, recruited by planters who often altered without consultation or negotiation with the workers. At the end of their employment on the plantations, some of the immigrants chose to remain near where they had been employed. Living in cultural isolation rather than in the China towns in major cities, the immigrants soon adopted new surnames, so that even among brothers and sisters variations of names existed; they formed no associations or guilds specific to their heritage; and they intermarried, so that a few generations later their physical features were no longer readily observable in their descendants. Based on extensive research in documents and family correspondence as well as interviews with descendants of the immigrants. 
  • FamilySearch: Chinese Archives and Libraries 

Ancestors From India

Introduction and General Guides 

Names / Surnames 

Genealogy records 

Immigration to the U.S. 

Periodicals 

Maps 

  • Library of Congress: India (2023) by Central Intelligence Agency. 
  • Library of Congress: India (1903) by Dodd, Mead & Company. 
  • Library of Congress: India (1844) by Carey & Hart 

Virginia Room Resources 

  • The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas, by Gérard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau ; maps by Catherine Petit ; translated from the French by A.M. Berrett (VREF 304.8 C 1995, or through the Internet Archive) -  A groundbreaking perspective on the great religious and cultural diasporas of the world. Here, the very definition of "diaspora"--which embraces forced exile, voluntary migrations, and "minorities of inferiorization"--is examined in detail. The text is richly complemented with full-color maps and an iconography of synagogues, churches, and other cultural markers. Contents: The problem of diasporas -- The Jewish diaspora -- The Armenian diaspora -- The Gypsy diaspora -- The Black diaspora -- The Chinese diaspora -- The Indian diaspora -- The Irish diaspora -- The Greek diaspora -- The Lebanese diaspora -- The Palestinian diaspora -- The Vietnamese and Korean diasporas. 

Miscellaneous 

  • Library of Virginia: Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Resources 
  • FamilySearch: India Archives and Libraries 
  • SAADA: South Asian American Digital Archive 
  • UC Davis: Punjabi and Sikh Diaspora Digital Archive 
  • The 1947 Partition of British India: Forced Migration and Its Reverberations (Read for Free from Sage Publications) 
  • The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee (305.895 L 2015) - This book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States, published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Part one: Beginnings: Asians in the Americas. Los Chinos in New Spain and Asians in early America; Coolies -- Part two: The making of Asian America during the age of mass migration and Asian exclusion. Chinese immigrants in search of Gold Mountain; "The Chinese must go!": the anti-Chinese movement ; Japanese immigrants and the "yellow peril" ; "We must struggle in exile": Korean immigrants ; South Asian immigrants and the "Hindu invasion" ; "We have heard much of America": Filipinos in the U.S. empire ; Border crossings and border enforcement: undocumented Asian immigration -- Part three: Asian America in a world at war. "Military necessity": the uprooting of Japanese Americans during World War II; "Grave injustices": the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II; Good war, Cold War -- Part four: Remaking Asian America in a globalized world. Making a new Asian America through immigration and activism; In search of refuge: Southeast Asians in the United States; Making a new home: Hmong refugees and Hmong Americans; Transnational immigrants and global Americans -- Part five: twenty-first-century Asian Americans. The "rise of Asian Americans"?: myths and realities -- Epilogue: Redefining America in the twenty-first century. 

Korean Ancestors

Introduction and General Guides 

Names / Surnames 

Genealogy Records in English 

Genealogy Records in Korean 

Immigration to U.S. 

Periodicals 

Maps 

Virginia Room Resources 

  • Korean Kirogi Families : Placemaking, Belonging, and Mothering, by Young A. Jung. (VREF 371.826 Jung 2024) - Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork at Fairfax County, Virginia, and Daechi-dong, Seoul, Korea, Korean Kirogi Families explores how transnational activities of kirogi families influence their sense of place and belonging. 
  • Hamburger Coke: Tales of Poverty and Public Service, One Immigrant's Journey Through Long Hair, Mushu Pork, Height, Soccer Coaching, Elections, and Other Important Lessons Along the Way. By Ilryong Moon; edited by Joony Moon; translated by Wanda Park (VREF B MOON 2021) - In this book, the author who came to the US as an immigrant from Korea when he was 17 years old shares stories of his life journey in the new country overcoming poverty and language and cultural barriers and serving for more than 20 years, including 3 years as its chairman, on the School Board of Fairfax County, arguably one of the best school districts in the country. His stories include how he at point grew his hair long and tried to learn new language as an ESL student, the first time he faced Mushu Pork in a Chinese restaurant, self-consciousness about his stature, a brief stint as a parent-volunteer soccer coach and wins and losses in elections. He pays tributes to his parents for sacrificing so much for their children. 
  • 스카이캐슬 교육위원 이야기 / Ilryong Moon. / Seukaikaeseul gyoyug-wiwon iyagi / Mun-Illyong (VREF KO B MOON 2020) - This book is a carefully curated collection of approximately 70 newspaper and radio columns that the author has published over the last 2 decades in the local Korean community media. The writings depict his journey to the United States in the mid 1970s as a teenage Korean immigrant and describe how he served as an elected Fairfax County School Board member for 20 years. The stories describe his experiences as an ESL student, raising his two children, his work as a school board member, the people he has met along the way, and more life experiences in Fairfax County, Virginia. 
  • A Genealogy of Dissent : The Progeny of Fallen Royals in Chosŏn Korea, by Eugene Y. Park (VREF 951.9 Park 2019) - In late Chosŏn when most Kaesŏng Wangs were detached from officialdom, the throne repeatedly articulated its desire to better honor the legacies of Koryŏ, human and material. Chapter 4 highlights how the court took stock of the state of Koryŏ royal tombs, other physical remains of Koryŏ, and the Kaesŏng Wang themselves--all while the position of ritual heir devolved to essentially that of Sungŭijŏn superintendent. As the late-Chosŏn elite as a whole became increasingly removed from officialdom and based their aristocratic status solely on descent, the Kaesŏng Wang published their first-ever comprehensive genealogy in 1798. 
  • Washington Joong Ang ilbo eobsolog | Korea Times Washington D.C. Korean Business Directory (VREF 384.6058 W 2018) - Text in Korean and English. 
  • A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, by Tom Gjelten (VREF 325.73 G 2015) - In the fifty years since the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, the foreign-born population of the United States has tripled. Significantly, these immigrants are not coming from Europe, as was the case before 1965, but from all corners of the globe. Today non-European immigration is ninety percent of the total immigration to the US. Americans today are vastly more diverse than ever. They look different, speak different languages, practice different religions, eat different foods, and enjoy different cultures. In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was ninety percent white, ten percent African-American, with a little more than one hundred families who were 'other.' Currently the African-American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than fifty percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually 'Americanize.' Hailing from Korea, Bolivia, and Libya, these families have stories that illustrate common immigrant themes: friction between minorities, economic competition and entrepreneurship, and racial and cultural stereotyping. 
  • A Family of No Prominence: The Descendants of Pak Tŏkhwa and The Birth of Modern Korea, by Eugene Y. Park (VREF 929.2 PAK 2014) - Koreans are known for their keen interest in genealogy and inherited ancestral status. Yet today's ordinary Korean would be hard pressed to explain the whereabouts of ancestors before the twentieth century. With A Family of No Prominence, Eugene Y. Park gives us a remarkable account of a nonelite family, that of Pak Tŏkhwa and his descendants (which includes the author). Spanning the early modern and modern eras over three centuries (1590-1945), this narrative of one family of the chungin class of people is a landmark achievement. What we do know of the chungin, or "middle people," of Korea largely comes from profiles of wealthy, influential men, frequently cited as collaborators with Japanese imperialists, who went on to constitute the post-1945 South Korean elite. This book highlights many rank-and-file chungin who, despite being better educated than most Koreans, struggled to survive. We follow Pak Tŏkhwa's descendants as they make inroads into politics, business, and culture. Yet many members' refusal to link their family histories and surnames to royal forebears, as most other Koreans did, sets them apart, and facilitates for readers a meaningful discussion of identity, modernity, colonialism, memory, and historical agency
  • The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas, by Gérard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau ; maps by Catherine Petit ; translated from the French by A.M. Berrett (VREF 304.8 C 1995, or through the Internet Archive) - A groundbreaking perspective on the great religious and cultural diasporas of the world. Here, the very definition of "diaspora"--which embraces forced exile, voluntary migrations, and "minorities of inferiorization"--is examined in detail. The text is richly complemented with full-color maps and an iconography of synagogues, churches, and other cultural markers. Contents: The problem of diasporas -- The Jewish diaspora -- The Armenian diaspora -- The Gypsy diaspora -- The Black diaspora -- The Chinese diaspora -- The Indian diaspora -- The Irish diaspora -- The Greek diaspora -- The Lebanese diaspora -- The Palestinian diaspora -- The Vietnamese and Korean diasporas.
  • Ethnic Genealogy: A Research Guide, Edited by Jessie Carney Smith, foreword by Alex Haley (VREF 929.1 ETHN 1983) - Chapter 8: "Asian-American Records and Research" by Greg Gubler (70 pgs.), covers: Research Problems and Approaches - Immigrant Groups and Settlement Patterns (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indochinese, Other Asians) -- Records in the Continental U.S. and Hawaii -- Records Abroad -- A Typical Chinese- and Japanese-American Search. 

Miscellaneous 

Vietnamese Ancestors

Names / Surnames 

Genealogy records 

Immigration to the U.S. 

Periodicals 

Maps 

Virginia Room Resources 

  • Distant Patrol, Virginia and the Vietnam War, by Donald C. Harrison (VREF 975.5 H 1989) - Pub. under the auspices of the Virginia Korean-Vietnam War History Council, Department of Historic Resources. 
  • Echoes of Little Saigon : Vietnamese Immigration and the Changing Face of Arlington, by Kim A. O'Connell (VREF 975.5295 O 2016) - The Arlington County Public Library and master’s degree students from Virginia Tech’s Department of Urban Affairs and Planning (National Capital Region) collaborated on a project to collect the stories of the Vietnamese community who immigrated to, shopped at or owned businesses in Arlington, Virginia’s Clarendon neighborhood when it was known as “Little Saigon” during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The organizers of this project interviewed and recorded stories and collected photos. 
  • Second Generation Vietnamese Americans : A Comparative Perspective, by Nguyen Thuy Vy (VREF 305.8959 N 2014) - This book is the third in the series on the Fairfax County Asian American History Project (FCAAHP). It is a collection of stories in print and in pictures of those who were born as American citizens, who share a common Vietnamese ethnic origin, and who primarily grew up or chose to come and live in the Northern Virginia, D.C., and Maryland area. It provides a comparative perspective across generations, across state and country borders, and across various experiences at different stages of their authors' lives. It seeks to capture the impressions of those who live within and those who seek to construct and expand the contours of what it means to be a community. These stories reflect the important role of youth in our County and the future direction of a multicultural megalopolis like Fairfax County. 
  • Vietnamese American Place Making in Northern Virginia, by Joseph Wood (VREF 305.8959 W 1997) - Vietnamese Americans have made places for themselves in Northern Virginia by reconfiguring the geography of the suburban places they inherited, including former high‐order central‐place nodes. Vietnamese American residences, churches, cemetery plots, and other distinctive ethnic markers are by and large dispersed and rarely noticeable. Their retail districts, however, serve them in multiple material and symbolic ways, not unlike suburban Chinatowns. 
  • A Community Sampler. Vietnamese Speaking Households with Public School Children, by the Department of Systems Management for Human Services (VRARE 312.9 F 2000) - 4 unnumbered pages : color illustrations 
  • The Penguin Atlas of Diasporas, by Gérard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau ; maps by Catherine Petit ; translated from the French by A.M. Berrett (VREF 304.8 C 1995, or through the Internet Archive) - A groundbreaking perspective on the great religious and cultural diasporas of the world. Here, the very definition of "diaspora"--which embraces forced exile, voluntary migrations, and "minorities of inferiorization"--is examined in detail. The text is richly complemented with full-color maps and an iconography of synagogues, churches, and other cultural markers. Contents: The problem of diasporas -- The Jewish diaspora -- The Armenian diaspora -- The Gypsy diaspora -- The Black diaspora -- The Chinese diaspora -- The Indian diaspora -- The Irish diaspora -- The Greek diaspora -- The Lebanese diaspora -- The Palestinian diaspora -- The Vietnamese and Korean diasporas. 

Miscellaneous 

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