Exclusion-Era Paper Chase

"How To" information at the bottom of this page.

Immigration records were critical to uncovering the story of Quon Mane and his brothers, and to adding detail to the story of Albert and his brothers. They are what have turned this site into a broader historic record, rather than merely a scrapbook of family anecdote and memorabilia.

Records of 250,000+ Chinese

If you or anyone you know is interested in the history of Chinese individuals in the US during the 1882 to 1943 Exclusion period, and have not consulted these records, please think about doing so.

See below for information on how to find these files.

There are case files on some 200,000 indviduals, plus additional partnership records for Chinese businesses. Files may be just a few pages or 100 or more, but often include photos, identity documents (as per the main photo on the page), travel records, and statements by the individual and their witnesses. Questioning for personal statements typically revolved around other family members and village details. Files of other relatives who came to the US are often cross-referenced and so may also be found.

Why These Records Exist

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and subsequent legislation until 1943 essentially barred all Chinese from entering the US, apart from a very small number of exempt groups (Merchants, Students, Teachers, Diplomats or Officials).

Every time a person of Chinese descent arrived at a US port of entry, he or she was scrutinized and questioned to determine eligibility for one of these limited categories, thus generating these so-called Arrival Case Files.

Chinese approved one time, but later looking to travel and return again were required to apply for a Re-Entry Permit, generating additional file material. However, while such permits supposedly facilitated re-entry, they did not guarantee it.

Partnership records were created ostensibly to help Chinese seeking to qualify for entry as merchants. However, what lines of work qualified someone as a merchant versus a laborer was often extremely arbitrary.

Part of the History of All Americans

If you remember nothing else about this site, please remember that knowing about Chinese Exclusion is important not just for Chinese-Americans to trace their family history, but for all Americans to understand how we went from being a nation open to all, to one ready to selectively close the gate.

Passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act was our first attempt to regulate immigration, and we focused attention on one tiny group with readily identifiable physical differences. Then in the process of figuring out how to restrict the Chinese, we trialed and built up the language, personnel and methods used countless times up to this day to exclude many people and groups besides those with Chinese backgrounds.

In 1882, there were about 100,000 Chinese in the US (net of the 300,000 who had entered since the Gold Rush, since many Chinese only sought temporary work). By contrast about 1 million Irish had come to the US and about 1 million Germans would come to the US before the turn of the century.

The gate-keeping concept draws on: Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

Other Aspects of Discrimination

Those few Chinese allowed to enter were barred from becoming citizens. Until 1931, women who were US citizens lost their citizenship if they married a Chinese man. (This happened to Lily when she married Albert in 1929.)

Chinese were not just scrutinized upon arrival, but at all times. They were required to obtain certificates of residence and carry identification documents. Violations carried the threat of deportation.

These requirements also extended to ethnic Chinese who were US citizens.

Such requirements were not imposed on any other groups, although they were later extended to other Asians, and eventually became the basis for the green-card system.

Silver Linings

The fact that these records are now readily available may be some small consolation. It is also noteworthy that because of the kinds of questions Chinese Inspectors chose to ask, it is possible to learn about female relatives, such as wives, sisters and mothers, for whom there are otherwise no or fewer records. Typical details that may surface are: given names, age, bound foot status and village.

Cautions

Because of the high stakes of immigration interrogations, even honest-dealing families prepped and sometimes refined or simplified their stories. As a result, there are details that may need to be treated with skepticism.

For example, did the Quons' Long Har village really have 100 houses, as was said over and over by various Quons, or was that just an agreed-upon easy number? We also note that Quon Mane told immigration authorities that both his sons were the children of his second wife, whereas we believe that his elder son was the child of his first wife. However, since that son was born after children born by his second wife, he may have wished to simplify the story and avoid needlessly bringing up the Chinese custom of multiple wives, which US authorities would have known about but probably still viewed negatively.

Case File Example Docs

This richly illustrated student guide prepared for a 2014 exhibition by the New York Historical Society is a fantastic overview of Chinese Exclusion that includes many individual stories: https://chineseamerican.nyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Chinese-American-Classroom-Materials.pdf

Resource 15, Jung Joong Case File, is an example of a typical 6-page immigration interrogation.

DocsTeach https://www.docsteach.org/documents/documents (part of NARA's education division)

A search on "Chinese Exclusion" calls up hundreds of illuminating primary documents, many of which are also typical examples of what researchers may be able to find for their own family members or other individuals.

How to Find Case Files

I have been searching for case files only since the Covid pandemic began, have conducted all my searches entirely online, and have been kindly provided for a fee with about 20 individual files and 10 company files by NARA San Bruno and NARA Riverside archivists.

Frankly, I have found NARA's own guides a bit confusing. They only made sense after I had some actual files in hand. So my recommendation is to just jump in and try to get started.

Admittedly, the files I have been looking for have all involved pre-1930 California arrivals for persons born before 1920. There are more subtleties to the cataloguing of later and non-San Francisco arrivals.

1) If you have a good idea of how someone's name was normally spelled/romanized, you can type that name in the National Archives (NARA) search bar: https://catalog.archives.gov/ to see if you find an index listing.

Relatively few whole files are digitized and available directly from the catalog, but if you find any plausible listings (eg, travel dates appear correct), you may write to the relevant NARA branch (often NARA San Bruno, but not always) with the person's basic details and the ARC or Identifier number to request the file.

In my experience, archivists are responsive and will reply within a few days or weeks at most, and offer to provide a PDF version of the file if it is found. There is typically a $1-$2 per page fee, and $20-$25 minimum.

Above is a screenshot showing a search on "Quon Mane". The top five listings are Chinese exclusion records:

#1 is a record for Quon Mane's Certificate of Identity, but in my experience, no corresponding file exists in the archives. Any Certificates of Identity that do exist may be found for free on FamilySearch.org - however, this does require some knowledge and patience to search through unindexed image-only files.

#2 is a different name/person. By chance he is a somewhat close Quon relative, but this is only because Quon is a relatively Chinese surname spelling.

#3 is a different person with the same name. I only found this out after ordering the file and looking at it.

#4 is the correct Quon Mane.

#5 is Quon Mane's daughter Mary, but her name became a bit confused because an official at some point was unclear about whether Quon or Mane or both were her surname.

2) If you aren't sure about a name spelling, you may want to look for family documents that will provide alternate spellings or names. Naturalization or other documents may actually have the case file number noted. (See some typical "case number" formats in the screenshot above.)

3) If you find any kind of case file number, you can try searching on just the number, and sometimes you will find a person or spelling you were not aware of which can be helpful in some way. (Or try searching on just the part of the number before the slash, which references a ship; sometimes the part after the slash, which references the passenger, will be slightly changed - e.g. "0" added in place of a hyphen.)

4) If you have a reasonable spelling, plus any other information such as year of arrival, year of birth, port of entry, ship name, or case number, you can simply write to NARA San Bruno or other relevant branch and take your chances.

A record may exist but you may not find it in the online catalog because:

it has not yet been catalogued.
there is still some discrepancy between the name you have and the named used to catalog the file.

5) Some odd situations I have encountered:

For two relatives, I found a second case file held at NARA Riverside. There was some overlap in contents, but mostly different material. I cannot remember for sure, but I believe that somewhere in my searches I turned up alternate case file numbers and looked for them in the catalog.

Within a case file, I found some materials for a different person with the same name. This was not a modern error, but an error back in the day. There was a photo, which along with other information that didn't jibe eventually made me realize the error. But even correct photos from time periods looked so different, for a long time, I had convinced myself they were the same person.

If you're still not having any luck, investigate the resources below or contact me.

Further Resources

Learn to navigate different name spellings and calendar systems to find ancestral villages, family trees (jiapu), and Exclusion Act files for individuals and business.

Chinese Family History Group of Southern California: Their free resources pages is an excellent starting point. Join and you gain access to a further guide, plus access to past webinars by Marisa Louie Lee, John Wong and others, as well as the chance to your family tree for free: https://chinesefamilyhistory.org/
Legacy Family Tree Webinars (paid site): There are maybe only 3 webinars on Chinese topics, but good ones with handouts. Grant Din on Chinese research broadly and Trish Hackett Nicola on Exclusion Act case files (also see her site: https://chineseexclusionfiles.com).
FamilySearch.org (free site): Check out their Wikis, as well as "How to Use This Collection" guides - e.g.: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Chinese_Emigration_and_Immigration.