Was the First Filipino American Citizen Naturalized in Norfolk County?

While working on records in the Naturalization Records Digital Collection, I came across one that made me stop and do a double-take. It was the report for naturalization of one Leon Zapanta from the city of Manila in the Philippines. This report, originally found in the Norfolk County (Va.) Naturalization Records, 1808-1895, stood out to me for a couple of reasons.

To begin with, the Alien Naturalization Act of 1918 is typically considered the first instance of Filipino individuals being exempted from the racial barriers that had long blocked Asians and Pacific Islanders from obtaining United States citizenship. immigrants individuals being exempted from the racial barriers that had long blocked Asians and Pacific Islanders from obtaining United States citizenship. Originally, the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted official United States citizenship to “free white person[s]”, and the Naturalization Act of 1870 only extended this restriction to include persons of African descent. The 1918 act was a World War I-era provision that made specific allowances for Filipino soldiers who had served in the U.S. military for at least three years to complete the naturalization process to become U.S. citizens, rather than simply remaining U.S. nationals who owed allegiance as colonial subjects without the full rights of citizenship.

Yet more than half a century earlier, Leon Zapanta was beginning his own naturalization process in the city of Portsmouth. What was even more surprising, however, was that I had already heard about the “first” naturalized Filipino American citizen. This man was allegedly an exception even to the exceptions, given to Filipino soldiers and completed his naturalization process before the end of the 19th century despite not being a “free white person”.

But his name was Ramon Reyes Lala, naturalized in the 1890s, not Leon Zapanta, naturalized in the 1860s.

Ramon Reyes Lala was also from Manila, but he was a writer from one of the wealthiest families in the Philippines. He immigrated to the United States in the late 1880s and completed his naturalization in approximately 1892.¹ Books and newspapers that published his works often praised his citizenship, claiming that he was “the only Filipino, it is said, who enjoys this distinction.”² This has led some modern sources to declare that Ramon Reyes Lala was the first Filipino American to be naturalized in the United States.

Yet here again was Leon Zapanta, who filed his report for naturalization more than 30 years earlier. Is it possible that Leon Zapanta’s record proves that this claim about the “first” Filipino American citizen is as dubious as The Herald of Los Angeles’s 1898 claim that Ramon Reyes Lala was the “only Filipino in America”?³ (A claim that was definitely not true, given both the presence of individual Filipinos like Zapanta and the existence of communities like Saint Malo, a village of Filipino fishermen in Lousiana that was already decades old when it was documented by Harper’s Weekly in 1871.)

Well, it’s complicated. The only record for Leon Zapanta in either the Library’s digital collection or collection of original loose papers was that 1860 report for naturalization. The problem is that this record was filed as part of Leon Zapanta’s declaration of intent to become a citizen. U.S. naturalization in the 19th century was a multi-step process.

Declarations of intent are often also called “first papers” because they were the first record submitted by an immigrant to initiate the naturalization process. After a certain number of years (generally three), an applicant could submit a petition of naturalization, or “second papers.” An accepted petition will typically note the date that an applicant was admitted as a citizen and that their oath of allegiance to the United States was taken.

Without record of a petition, we have no way of knowing when—or even if—Leon Zapanta’s citizenship was officially granted. And his petition was nowhere to be found.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it doesn’t exist, however. It’s entirely possible that Leon Zapanta’s petition was simply lost or destroyed at some point over the course of the last century and a half. The petition may even be waiting to be discovered somewhere in a box of not-yet-processed records here at the Library of Virginia. Fortunately, there are many additional historical sources we can check to supplement the loose naturalization records found in our online collection.

My first step was to check the Library’s microfilmed copies of Norfolk County’s minute books from 1860 to 1873. Minute books for a county’s court contain brief entries that record all matters brought before the court, including an individual’s naturalization. This means that a person’s admission of citizenship will typically be noted in a minute book as an entry. These entries may not include the same level of detailed biographical information as loose naturalization papers, but they often preserve information about naturalizations that would otherwise be lost when the corresponding loose records go missing.

Unfortunately, that was not the case for Leon Zapanta’s petition for citizenship. An 1860 entry into Norfolk County (Va.) Minute Book No. 34, 1857-1860, Norfolk County (Va.) Reel 73 does note that he had declared his intention to become a citizen, and an index entry in the same volume does include a “qual. citizen U.S.” note next to his name, but that’s not enough information to date the end of his naturalization process. There were no other entries concerning Leon Zapanta.

This failure brought me to my next stop: Ancestry.com. Searching Leon Zapanta’s name in the online database still didn’t uncover any additional naturalization records, though it did return two records that were just as intriguing. One was an 1858 entry for Leon Zapanti in a General Register of Patients in the U.S. Naval Hospital near Portsmouth, Virginia. The other was an 1860 entry for Leon Zapanto in the U.S. Naval Enlistment Rendezvous returns for Norfolk.

Despite the minor differences in spelling, it seems very likely that these records were referring to the same Leon Zapanta from the Library’s naturalization records—an immigrant from Manila, born around 1816, who arrived in Virginia in the late 1840s and built a life in the city of Portsmouth.

These records also provide additional information that can help us to draw as full a picture of him as the biographical sketches created for Ramon Reyes Lala. We now know that shortly after Leon Zapanta arrived in the United States in 1846, he enlisted in the United States Navy. He eventually assumed the role of naval carpenter or “carp. mate” and served for thirteen years before re-enlisting in 1860. We can even create a clear physical picture of him, thanks to his enlistment rendezvous return entry.

With only a couple of records, Leon Zapanta has developed from a short paragraph on a single piece of paper to a 5-feet-5-inches-tall individual with black hair, hazel eyes, and a history of intermittent fevers.

As interesting as it was to uncover more about him as an individual, this still did not answer the original question. Was Leon Zapanta of Norfolk County the actual first Filipino American to complete the naturalization process to become a U.S. citizen?

And the answer to that is…I still don’t know. And we probably never will.

It’s possible that he eventually ran into the racial barriers facing non-white immigrants and his naturalization process never went further than submitting his report. It’s similarly possible that he did complete his naturalization, and the records are still waiting to be identified and processed. There’s also the possibility that Leon Zapanta’s naturalization process was interrupted in ways he could have never seen coming. He submitted his first papers in June of 1860, and the United States military was famously very busy beginning in April 1861. Leon Zapanta, a naval carpenter, would likely have been among the large numbers of Asian service members fighting in the armed forces during the Civil War. He may have died during the fighting. Or he may have been relocated to a different locality or state, and his second papers are waiting to be uncovered in another archive.

There’s even the very real possibility that another archive has the records of a different Filipino American altogether, who defied the officially codified racial restrictions and complete the naturalization process before either Leon Zapanta or Ramon Reyes Lala.

This search reminded me that historical research isn’t about finding absolute answers. It’s hard to know things like a definitive “first” and the past can be much messier than what was recorded in the official laws for a time period. Instead, it’s about finding new evidence that makes our understanding of the past fuller and deeper. Archives are the places where those discoveries can happen. Although Leon Zapanta may not have been the first Filipino American citizen, his record still adds a new piece to the story of Filipino American citizenship.

You can view Leon Zapanta’s report for citizenship online through the Library of Virginia’s Naturalization Records Digital Collection, along with loose, local naturalization records for more than 2,000 other 18th- and 19th-century Virginia immigrants. Naturalization records for later Filipino American service members who benefited from the Alien Naturalization Act of 1918 can be found in the Library’s collection of Military Naturalization Petition volumes for the city of Norfolk, Newport News/Warwick County, Hopewell, Petersburg, and Prince George County. The volumes are not currently available online.

These and other 20th-century naturalization volumes from Virginia’s localities will be added to the digital collection in the future as records are digitized and indexed. Follow the UncommonWealth blog and the Library of Virginia’s social media for the latest updates.

To learn more about general naturalization research and using additional sources like county minute books and Ancestry.com, visit the Naturalization Records for Virginians Research Guide or contact Archives Reference Services directly at archdesk@lva.virginia.gov.