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I am Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Grinnell College and a historical archaeologist who studies late 19th and early 20th century Chinese migrants and the communities they formed across the Pacific Ocean. Part of my research methods involve the use of historical documents such as Certificates of Residence to understand the lives of Chinese migrants. I share my collaborative research on the Buried Chinatowns blog: https://buriedchinatowns.sites.grinnell.edu/.

 

The following is adapted from an article that will appear in the journal Historical Archaeology in Spring 2026.

 

Chinese Laborers, the Geary Act, and Deportation Raids in Inland Southern California

 

When the Geary Act passed, the Chinese Six Companies told Chinese immigrants in the U.S. to refuse registration. In the end, the organization was unable to overturn the law and many Chinese migrants ended up registering. Each registrant received a Certificate of Residence (CoR) to prove that they were residing in the U.S. legally while the Chinese Exclusion Act restricting the immigration of Chinese laborers was the law. 

 

One of those who complied with the Geary Act was vegetable farmer Wong Turn who registered as a laborer and received his CoR on March 4th, 1894 (Figure 1). While Chinese migrants were expected to carry their CoR with them at all times, this important document could also be kept at a merchant store with a clansman whom they could trust especially if they would be crossing the Pacific Ocean to visit their home villages. Wong Turn successfully applied for a laborer return certificate to go to his home village of Gom Benn in Toisan County in 1900; when he returned to the U.S. in 1901, he stated to immigration officials that he placed his certificate with the Gee Chung store in San Bernardino Chinatown (Wong Hing Shin interview 1907). 

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In 1906, however, Wong Turn was working as a vegetable farmer on leased land that was part of the Cooley Ranch in San Bernardino and noticed that he was longer in possession of his CoR and requested a new one (Wong Turn interview 1907). He hired lawyer Ralph Swing to obtain a new CoR; Swing corresponded with U.S. immigration officials several times and eventually obtained a new CoR in 1907. I happened to find Wong Turn’s lost CoR over a hundred years later in online immigration records digitized by the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. 1.

 

What was life like for a vegetable farmer like Wong Turn under the Geary Act? What would be the danger of not having a CoR? Historic newspapers from San Bernardino indicate that deportation raids occurred fairly frequently at Chinese truck farming cooperatives called “Chinese gardens” and could involve cooperation between Chinese Inspectors—immigration officers charged with enforcing federal Chinese exclusion laws—and local San Bernardino Police. 

 

For example, in November 1906, a deportation raid that took place at night was led by Chinese Inspector Guy H. Tuttle with help from San Bernardino policeman John Henderson, who had been told that Chinese farmers living on the Golden Ranch on Sterling Street had no certificates. Tuttle and Henderson entered the residences and arrested eight Chinese on the truck farm; one person escaped in an irrigation ditch and another who had been caught stated that his certificate had burned in the San Francisco fire following the 1906 earthquake (The San Bernardino County Sun 1906). 

 

In June 1908, two Chinese Inspectors and two local San Bernardino police officers worked together to commence deportation raids on all of the Chinese truck farms east of the city at night. Unlike previous raids, shots were fired when two Chinese farmers ran from the scene and one Chinese man was roughly handled when he attempted to escape (The San Bernardino County Sun 1908). As a farmer, Wong Turn might have survived one of these violent deportation raids or at the very least heard about them.

 

What happened to Wong Turn? The last historical document that I could find on Wong Turn dates to 1921 when he was seeking to return to China again—20 years after his last trip to his home village. He was a 57 year old farmer and had a $1,000 interest in a 100-acre Chinese vegetable farming cooperative located in Los Angeles (Wong Turn interview 1921). In order to receive permission to re-enter the U.S., Chinese laborers had to possess at least $1,000 or owe the equivalent in debts or property (Perkins 1976, 182). Presumably the goal of Wong Turn’s trip was to visit his wife Jin Shee whom he had not seen since they married two decades earlier, but he still had to contend with the Geary Act. During Wong Turn’s interview to obtain a laborer’s return certificate, he was asked to produce his replacement CoR from 1907 and two of his Chinese witnesses who vouched for his interest in the vegetable farm had to show their own CoR. The two witnesses were able to comply and remarkably both were in possession of their original certificates from 1894. 

 

While the paper trail on Wong Turn turns cold after 1921, we do know that the Geary Act was in place until the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943. This means that most Chinese migrants who registered in 1894 had to carry their CoR for their entire lives and this was in fact the case for a Chinese house servant named Quon Ock who died in 1928 in nearby city of Riverside. His employer—the Malloch family—noted that when Quon Ock passed away in their residence, they found his CoR underneath his pillow, which stated that he had registered in Riverside on February 21, 1894 (The Riverside Daily Press 1928, 10). For Chinese laborers like Wong Turn and Quon Ock, the threat of deportation and anti-Chinese violence that could come with the enforcement of the Geary Act cast a long and menacing shadow on their lives in America. 

 

Endnotes

1. Wong Turn’s Certificate of Residence (CoR) was possibly in the possession of an immigration official because a number of other Chinese migrants’ CoR and official immigration documents are in the same collection; the CoR was part of the Chinese Historical Society of America collections, and was then donated to the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library in the 1990s (Sine Hwang Jensen, Personal Communication, Feb. 14, 2024).

 

Bibliography

Perkins, Clifford A. 1976. “Reminiscences of a Chinese Inspector.” The Journal of Arizona History 17 (2): 181–200.

 

The Riverside Daily Press

1928.    “In Memorium: Jim Ah,” February 22, 1928.

 

The San Bernardino County Sun

1906    “Chinese Are Gathered in By Police,” November 2, 1906.

 

1908    “Had No Papers, Chink Is Jailed,” June 24, 1908.

 

Wong Hing Shin interview, May 9. 

1907    “Wong Turn, File  5523/441; Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1892-1944; Los Angeles District Office; Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region (Riverside), Perris, CA.”

 

Wong Turn interview

1900    “Wong Turn, File 5523/441; Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1892-1944; Los Angeles District Office; Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region (Riverside), Perris, CA.”

 

1907    “Wong Turn, File 5523/441; Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1892-1944; Los Angeles District Office; Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region (Riverside), Perris, CA.”

 

1921    “Wong Turn, File 5523/441; Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1892-1944; Los Angeles District Office; Records of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record Group 85; National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region (Riverside), Perris, CA.”